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Nov. 27, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:21
November 27, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Well, now they've shut down a California hascrel suspicious device found.
They found a suspicious package at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
How can this be?
The Democrats won the election.
This stuff's not supposed to be happening anymore.
And have you noticed all these stories today on how to be happy?
I thought we took care of that by electing the Democrats.
But there's apparently a lot of misery out there, ladies and gentlemen.
And so we're going to discuss this.
Greetings.
Welcome back.
Rushlinboy here.
By the way, programming note, you will not be pleased.
I'm going to miss tomorrow and Wednesday, ladies and gentlemen.
I have received a special invitation, a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
I cannot turn it down.
It's not political.
I can't turn this down.
I've got to accept this.
And the only two days to do it are tomorrow and Wednesday.
So I'm going to add a couple vacation days to the normal 200 I take.
No, I have to do this.
It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But we'll be back Thursday and then straight through the maybe one other day.
I'm not sure yet, but otherwise straight through the Christmas season all the way up to, I forget, 22nd.
Christmas day is on a Monday this year, 24th, Sunday, 20th.
Yeah, we're right up to the right up through the 22nd.
We'll be here dead solid.
The Supreme Court today sided with Philip Morris, sided with Big Tobacco, refusing to disturb a court ruling that threw out a $10.1 billion verdict over the company's light cigarettes.
The court issued its order without comment.
Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court threw out the massive fraud judgment against Philip Morris, which is a unit of the Altria group, or Altria, I'm not sure how you pronounce it.
It was a class action lawsuit involving light cigarettes because the Federal Trade Commission allowed companies to characterize the cigarettes as light and low tar.
Philip Morris could not be held liable under state law, even if the terms it used could be found to be false or misleading, the state court said in Illinois.
A case involved 1.1 million people, 1.1 million sad sacks, 1.1 million get-rich quick schemers who bought light cigarettes in Illinois.
They claim that Philip Morris knew when it introduced such cigarettes in 1971 that they were no healthier than regular cigarettes, but hid that information, and the fact that light cigarettes actually had a more toxic form of tar.
An Illinois judge ruled in favor of the 1.1 million get-rich quick schemers in March of 2003, saying the company misled customers into believing that they were buying a less harmful cigarette.
But the Supreme Court threw it out, said, screw it, the award much too big, and Big Tobacco wins one.
All right, three stories today, my good friends, on happiness, which, as I say, stuns me given the fact that I thought everybody was delirious after the elections.
I haven't heard of any post-election stress trauma, such as after the 04 election or down in Fort Lauderdale, a bunch of distressed South Floridians needed to go get counseling over the fact, was it Boca?
They needed counseling after the Bush election victory.
I haven't heard of anything marginally like that at all.
Yet apparently there is a lot of misery.
And so all the stories on happiness are out.
Three headlines are, researchers seek routes to happier life.
The other another headline is study.
Money happiness link is complex.
And then there's the secret to success.
The, a hit internet movie, claims to reveal centuries-old secret?
Uh to getting what you want in life.
Uh, let's do this.
This uh money happiness link story.
First, it's uh from our old buddies at ALL, AP.
Does money buy happiness?
Sometimes said that scientists have found no relationship between money and happiness.
But that's a myth, says University OF Illinois psychologist Ed Diner.
The connection is complex, he says, but in fact very rich people rate substantially higher in satisfaction with life than very poor people do, even within wealthy nations.
There is overwhelming evidence that money buys happiness, said economist Andrew Oswald of the University OF Warwick in England.
The main debate, he said, is how strong the effect is.
Oswald recently reported a study of Britons who won between 2000 and 250 250 000 in a lottery.
As a group they showed a boost in happiness averaging a bit more than one point on a 36 point scale.
That was before they blew all the money that they won.
I mean the worst people to go ask about this are lottery winners, because they all end up miserable because they blow it all within 10 years.
That's why there's a group.
It's right down here.
What's the name of this group HOKE, the Sudden Money Institute.
Exactly right, it's up there in Palm Beach Gardens.
Uh, Sudden Money Institute.
This is this, a bunch of people that ask you to give them some of the money that you've won so they can tell you how to deal with the pitfalls, the pratfalls and the problems of coming suddenly into large amounts of money.
These are the wrong people to ask lottery winners.
But at any rate, as a group, lottery winners showed a boost in happiness, averaging a bit more than one point on a 36-point scale when surveyed two years after their win, compared to their levels two years before they won.
Well, hell's bells, the next day is within two years after you win.
Most people are delirious when they win the lottery.
It doesn't take but a day or two for the bad feelings to set in, because family members you haven't seen in years, friends you never had uh, lawyers you never knew everybody makes a beeline for them uh, to try to get their fair share of the of the winnings.
Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner and Princeton economist, and colleagues recently declared that the notion that making a lot of money will produce, good overall mood is mostly illusory.
They noted that in one study, people with household incomes of ninety thousand dollars or more were only slightly more likely to call themselves very happy overall than were people from households making 50 to 89 000.
the rates were 43 percent 42 percent respectively members of the high income group were almost twice As likely to call themselves very happy as people from households with incomes below 20,000.
Now, that, of course, you would think it at first blush makes total sense.
Those of you in this audience ask you, how many of you make whatever you make?
If tomorrow you made 20, would you be happy versus what you're making today?
You might be able to adjust to it.
Many of you probably have.
Many of you have probably gone through ups and downs.
And I know a lot of people in this audience are entrepreneurs and they've lost everything and they've built it back up.
And I imagine when you lose everything, it's not a very happy moment.
The notion that money doesn't buy happiness has been one of these myths that's been around.
And you know who starts this myth?
The rich.
The rich start it, so nobody starts competing with them for what they've got.
So the rich are telling people, hey, money doesn't buy happiness.
Look at me.
I've got all the money in the world and I am miserable.
I got worthless kids.
I got bills at the wazoo.
I've got more complications with this.
You don't want any part of it.
The rich are the people out there that started this myth, money doesn't buy happiness, so that the non-rich will believe it, so that they will then try to go out and find happiness and tell themselves, even though they don't have a lot of money, they're still happy.
And there are a lot of people in that circumstance, by the way.
But the idea that money doesn't buy happiness.
I've always thought this is, why do people pursue it?
Why do people want a raise?
Why do people want their career to elevate so that they get more money?
Why do they want to succeed in what they do?
It's not just the satisfaction people get from personal achievement.
It is because of the remuneration.
It is because of the compensation.
And as much class envy as there is in this country, sponsored and fostered by our good friends and Democrats, you know full well that millions of people in this country judge themselves on the basis of what they don't have.
Because they can turn on TV and they can see some entertainer, a musician or what have you, giving a guided tour of his crib with the requisite game room, media room, and four or five scantily clad models out by the pool.
How about lifestyles of the rich and famous?
Why did people watch that?
Well, one reason was they got the vicarious thrill from it.
But number two, well, hey, I want this too.
I'd like to be able to experience this.
The idea that money doesn't buy happiness is a myth because people think that it does.
Otherwise, they wouldn't pursue it.
So I've always thought that this is a myth.
You know, if I ever write my next book, and I've got two or three ideas for a next book, so maybe two or three books, I don't know.
But I can tell you that so much of what I thought various things would be when I didn't have them, but I aspired to them, are nothing at all like how I imagined they would be.
Success is not what I thought it would be.
I'm not saying it's bad.
I'm just saying I had no concept of what it would actually be.
I had no concept of having a lot of money.
I thought that it would enable a number of things and eliminate other kinds of problems.
And I was totally wrong about it without getting too personal.
But I don't know anybody.
And this is all you really need to say about this.
I don't know anybody with a lot of money who says, you know, I'm miserable, I'm giving it away.
Well, yes, I know, of course, I know people who are miserable, even though they have a lot of money.
They're miserable anyway.
They'd be miserable whether they had it or not.
But I'm just saying that if it was, I'm stick with this whole theory, money buys or doesn't buy happiness.
I'm just telling you that people who earn a lot of money and who are unhappy, the first thing they'll think to do to fix the situation will not be getting rid of their money.
So this is all, this story comes out every year at Christmastime.
I'm convinced it's put out there by forces, powerful forces among the rich to try to convince the middle class and the upper middle class to stay right where you are because anything more and you're going to be miserable.
As the other story here about researchers seeking routes to happier life, this really doesn't have much to do with money.
We'll talk about that next after the break.
Sit tight.
Coming right back before you know it.
Folks, you're just not going to believe this.
I have to read this to you.
It is a statement on the PR Business Wire by Russell Simmons, who is, how would you describe it?
Russell Simmons, the run DMC, is one of the early rappers.
Wears his hat sideways when he goes on television.
Married to Kamora Lee.
Businessman now has a clothing line.
He's a mogul.
That's right.
He goes out there and registers voters and so forth.
So here.
It's in Dateline, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Monday, November 27th, 2006, 5.30 p.m. local time.
I, Russell Simmons, have arrived at 5.30 p.m. Monday, November 27th, safely in South Africa.
I am here because the most important and powerful Muslim preacher and the most important and powerful Jewish rabbi I've met in my lifetime, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and Rabbi Mark Schneier, both individually told me to come here.
I am funded by the Diamond Information Center.
I am here to promote the transparency and integrity that is found in the conflict-free greatest diamonds in the world, which to me represents truth.
I am inspired by my lovely wife, Kamora Lee Simmons, and my children, Aoki Lee and Ming Lee Simmons.
I'm on a fact-finding mission to learn how the diamond industry, in conjunction with Simmons Jewelry Company, can positively affect the lives of the black Africans here who are suffering from poverty, HIV, and lack of high-quality education.
So there's two more paragraphs.
Stick with me on this.
He's now got the Simmons Jewelry Company, and he's over there at the suggestion of Calypso Louie and the Rabbi Mark Schneier to find out what he can do working with the greatest diamonds in the world, which to him are truth.
A fact-finding mission to learn how the diamond industry in conjunction with his jewelry company can positively affect the lives of black Africans who are suffering from poverty, HIV, and lack of high-quality education.
I have heard from Ken Sunshine directly, parentheses, Petra Nemkova and Leo DiCaprio's publicist, end parentheses, that Petra Nemkova is worried about the political and possible business ramifications of my trip and that she is awaiting her advisors to respond to whether she can join me.
I know her presence as a celebrity and the chairman of her Happy Hearts Foundation will give added attention to this mission, which is much needed to make it a success.
I pray that her advisors, including Ken Sunshine and all other parties, will advise her to accept this invitation as planned.
I am sending out this statement because I sincerely believe that the more people I can mobilize to support this mission, the greater chance we'll have to help improve the lives of the African people.
The more people talk about this mission, the more I can serve humanity.
Further, I believe that I am protected by the one God that protects all of humanity.
Sincerely, Russell Simmons is this not a classic case of self-absorption narcissism or what?
He flies over there to inspect the diamond industry because he's got the Simmons Jewelry Company.
The trip is obviously under the guise of ending AIDS and starvation and promoting education.
I don't know, folks.
And my guess is that he's going to be on TV shortly.
What a wonderful mission.
What compassion.
We need more people like Russell Simmons who care.
And he needs Ken Sunshine, a publicist, to get his client over there, Petra Nemkova, to solve all these problems.
Anyway, from that, ladies and gentlemen, we transition back to a happier life and the roots to a happier life.
As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Caroline Adams Miller knows a few things about using mental exercises to achieve goals.
But last year, one exercise she was asked to try took her by surprise.
Every night, she was to think of three good things that happened that day and analyze why they occurred.
That was supposed to increase her overall happiness.
I thought it was too simple to be effective, said Miller, 44 of Bethesda, Maryland.
I went to Harvard.
I'm used to things being complicated.
She was assigned the task as homework in a master's degree program, but as a chronic worrier, well, that's a great condition to be in if you're a motivational speaker and executive coach.
As a chronic worrier, she knew she could use the kind of boost that the exercise was supposed to deliver, and she got it.
The quality of my dreams has changed.
I never have trouble falling asleep, and I do feel happier.
Now, results may vary, but that exercise is one of several that have shown preliminary promise in recent research into how people can make themselves happier, not just for a day or two, but long-term.
It's part of a larger body of work that challenges a long-standing skepticism about whether it is even possible.
Martin Seelingman, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues have collected more than 100 specific recommendations, ranging from those of the Buddha through the self-improvement industry of the 1990s.
The problem is that most of the books on store shelves aren't backed up by rigorous research.
It's just individual theories on the part of the authors.
In fact, there's been very little research in how people become happier.
Why?
Well, the big reason, she said, this, by the way, is Sonia Ljubomirsky, a psychologist, University of California, Riverside.
She conducts studies on happiness.
And the big reason that there's been very little research on how people become happier is that many researchers have considered that quest to be futile because they're miserable.
Well, it doesn't actually say that, but I mean, there's got to be a reason.
Why do researchers think that research into why people are happy is futile?
Recent long-term studies have revealed that the happiness thermostat is more malleable than the popular theory maintained, at least in its extreme form.
Set point is not destiny, says, you know, one of these things, happiness is something you are, the mini's like comedy.
When you start talking about comedy in an analytical way, it's not funny.
When you start talking about happiness in one of these egghead kind of ways, you destroy the whole concept.
More on this when we come back.
Stay with us.
Thank you.
I know.
We're here executing assigned host duties flawlessly while having more fun than a human being.
Should be allowed to have just a couple more little passages here from this.
It's a very long AP story on researchers seek routes to happier life.
Other studies show an effect of specific life events, though, of course, the results are averages and can't predict what will happen to particular individuals.
Of course not.
There's a reason why most people aren't happy.
And in fact, most people aren't.
Because happiness is.
Let me finish this.
My brain starts getting fertile on me here, and I sound discombobulated.
Results show long-lasting shadows associated with events like serious disability, divorce, widowhood, and getting laid off.
The boost from getting married, on the other hand, seems to dissipate after about two years.
I'm thinking that long.
I mean, this is pretty optimistic.
What about the joys of having children?
Well, parents recall those years with fondness, but studies show that child rearing takes a toll on marital satisfaction, and we know what they mean by that.
Parents gain satisfaction as their kids leave home.
I have always known that that would be the case, which is why I have none.
I've always thought as a parent, the happiest day of your life would be either 18 or 19 and head off to college.
And even then, you're still going to pay for it.
At any rate, this whole concept of happiness, do you know how elusive it really is?
We have devised whole philosophies to deal with our unhappiness.
And probably the most powerful one is that there is virtue in suffering and that we are to endure hardships and that these hardships and their endurance increase our character and make us tougher and so forth and so on.
And I've always had a problem with it.
I have never thought that the gift of life was a gift of suffering.
I mean, it can be.
It can be whatever you make it.
I think too many people look at happiness as a series of events.
And if the events don't transpire as dreamt about or hoped for, then it leads to disappointment.
Contentment's probably a better objective for people.
But this is, look at, I've always said that you will not go to the library and find a book on how to fail because nobody knows how to do it, but you'll go to the book and find all the library and find all these positive thinking books.
And people that write them make millions because it doesn't seem to be the natural disposition of people.
And I think it's hard to come up with a single reason or even five or six reasons why people are happy or why they are unhappy because so much of it has to do with we're all individuals and we are all different.
I don't care what the libs try to do in trying to say we're all the same, men and women, boys and girls.
Everybody is different.
I have found, and this is just anecdotal, but I have found over my short little life here, the happiest people I have run into are people who are not obsessed with themselves and are not sitting around telling stories to themselves about how this isn't going to work or that isn't going to work or that's going to be too hard to do.
They're not inwardly focused.
They're outwardly focused.
And people who enjoy life are maximizing the opportunity to do so.
They have a different outlook on life than a lot of people.
They don't look at it as something to be endured.
And they don't look at the first half of it as something to be spent in abject misery for your reward later on when you retire or whatever.
But it's hard to put your hands around the arms around and offer anybody advice on how to be happy.
But probably the quickest route is to stop thinking about yourself so much.
Everybody be miserable when they do that.
Because most people don't like themselves or most people think they've got problems.
I'm too fat, I'm too short, I'm too bald.
You start focusing on all these negative things about yourself and it's impossible to be happy.
And then the second thing they do is focus on what everybody else thinks of them.
And everybody does that because everybody wants to be loved.
It's the toughest thing in the world to not care what people think of you because nobody's raised that way.
Everybody's raised to not offend people.
Everybody's raised to make everybody like you.
So you don't embarrass your family.
You don't embarrass your friends.
You don't embarrass yourself.
Everybody is raised.
I don't know anybody.
I don't know one, maybe Hitler, but I didn't know him.
I don't know anybody who grows up wanting to be hated as an objective, as a life objective, who takes happiness from it.
I don't know anybody who does that.
Everybody wants just the opposite.
Of course, not everybody's going to be loved by everybody.
Not everybody's going to be respected.
And when that's what you really want and it doesn't happen, A, you're not happy about it.
And B, start blaming yourself.
What's wrong with me?
And then people run around with these phobias because all they're doing is examining themselves, comparing themselves to others, and they're always coming up short.
And that's a great recipe for unhappiness.
When you think everybody's better than you, or everybody has more than you, or everybody's happier than you, or what have you.
And then there are people who look for acceptance from the wrong people.
Acceptance, love, all this from the wrong people.
And they reject it from the people that give it to them.
Everybody wants what they don't have.
And that's not a recipe for happiness.
Everybody thinks that what they don't have is better than what they do have.
I mean, there are exceptions to this.
I'm using everybody in a very generic sense.
Anyway, to the phones.
Susan Prescott, Arizona.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Money buys happiness dittos to you.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
You bet.
Hey, listen, I found out why, going back to your previous hour and why the Democrats don't like to be called Democrats.
And it had to do with what the term meant historically back in the 1790s.
And it's in a book by Joseph Ellis, who also wrote His Excellency about George Washington.
And in here, he's describing words and terms that were evolving during the time that our country was evolving, you know, right after the Revolutionary War.
And here are, I'm going to read this.
It's just one sentence, but it's the definition of a Democrat.
The term American, like the term Democrat, began as an epithet, the former referring to an inferior provincial creature, the latter to one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.
And you think that's why they don't like Democrat?
Well, I got to tell you, there's the definition.
There's the historical basis.
They might think that about American today, but I'll guarantee you they don't think that about Democrat.
Well, why don't they want to be called that?
Because it's not that they don't want to be called that, it's that they want to be called the Democratic Party because being Democratic is all-encompassing.
It's fair.
It's open.
It's got everybody gets what they want.
Democracy, Democratic.
If you say Democrat, the Democrat was a dirty word here.
And liberal is a dirty word.
Democrat was something that, you know, it had a negative connotation to it, like Republicans do now.
These things are cyclical.
But I will guarantee you that their choice, their demand to be called a Democratic Party, has nothing to do with whatever the ancient roots of the word Democrat were in this country in the 1790s.
It's all about wanting to be called the Democratic Party because it makes them sound more inclusive and bigger and fair than the Republican Party.
I mean, the Republicans could counter this and call themselves, we're the Republic Party.
But that would just confuse people.
It wasn't a Republic because that's not taught.
If you listen to this show, you know what a republic is.
Most people think we have a democracy.
Most people think we are Democrat.
The Democratic Party has the America's Party.
And that's how they want it perceived by the dingbats that pay scant attention to this stuff.
That's the sole reason.
Carl in St. Louis, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Well, it's an honor to talk to you.
I believe you're exactly where you ought to be.
And I hope the many years of work behind the radio.
We didn't order this.
We ordered it in IAX.
Okay.
Hey, Carl, we didn't order it.
Where are you out there, Carl?
Sorry about that.
I got something going on here.
One second.
The thing about the money being bringing happiness, I believe, is a reverse thing.
Money itself doesn't bring happiness, but the lack of money brings misery.
The lack of money can.
Lack of money can bring misery.
Been there.
In fact, I'll tell you the most unhappy time in my life.
It had nothing to do with money, but it did, well, not really true.
I was making, I think at the time, $15,000 a year.
I worked in a baseball team, the Kensington Royals.
And this would be 1980 or 81.
Well, it wasn't a living wage.
I found a way to do it using a – I don't know the details.
I found a way to do it in eating potato chips and snack foods where you could, because at grocery stores back then, you couldn't use a credit card.
I found places that sold junk food that is a credit card.
At any rate, I was surrounded by people who made tons.
And, hey, Rush, want to go to Aspen next week?
No, no, I don't have time.
I couldn't afford to go as the real reason.
And so you're right.
I was miserable not because I wasn't making a lot of money and I thought I deserved more.
We all do.
But the problem that it led to was that my focus became earning money rather than doing good work and staying focused on a career and so forth.
And that's what made me miserable because it didn't happen at that time.
The money wasn't forthcoming.
But you know, everything is relative.
When you're making 15 and your next job pays you 24, well, you think you're into money because now you don't have the problem.
But after a while, 24 is not enough because everybody lives beyond their means.
And no matter where you go, folks, I don't care who you are.
Even if you're Bill Gates, somebody is going to have more.
Like Crown Prince Abdullah of the Saudi Saudi Arabia.
There's always somebody who's going to have more.
So no matter what you acquire, I mean, I know people.
You remember how when you bought the car your dreams, when the first time you could actually buy what you wanted, how ecstatic you were.
I know people who can buy whatever car they want.
They can do it every day, get rid of the one they just bought yesterday.
It doesn't bring them happiness anymore.
After a while, as you progress through life, the things that gave you all kinds of joy, material things that gave you all kinds of joy cease to do so because everything's relative.
Everything levels out.
And so I think this whole business, money doesn't buy happiness, is the people that have it.
The reason it is said about them is because after a while, the money isn't the reason anybody's happy.
Because after a while, you've gotten used to what it can provide you.
And after that, there's nothing you can spend it on that is going to increase your happiness.
So then you start getting on it.
Well, why am I so miserable?
I have all this and I have all that.
Still unhappy.
I think that's why a lot of people get into charitable work, not just the tax consequences, because like I love giving away money.
Love sharing what I've earned with people.
That is happiness to me, not hoarding it or any of this.
But no matter where you are, at whatever stage you are economically in life, there's always going to be somebody with more.
And you can always therefore say, gosh, I don't rate.
Or I don't have that.
And a lot of people, and I was this way, when I was making this $24,000, I said, gee, if I could just, man, I would be in fat.
I used to love around and love to go around at parties and ask people, what, just give me the figure, what is big money to you?
People my age at the time, you know, 25, 30, what is big money to you?
And I was stunned at the answers.
They ran the gamut.
Oh, man, 75 grand and I would be set for life.
Some people, no, you got to have 250 million or you don't count.
It just, it just, it just ran the gamut.
But the point is that everybody's reference point is different.
And when that reference point is reached, the best way to illustrate this, back in the old days in the 1980s, I don't know if it still happens, Merrill Lynch, when they brought in prospective employees for the interview, they asked them, how much money do you want to earn here?
And if the prospective employee gave a number, it was a negative mark on the application.
Because the Merrill Lynch people discovered that once that number was reached, the comfort level had been reached and the work stopped.
So trying to get a handle on what it is that makes people happy, what was the money aspect to it at all, is impossible because that's really not where the root of it all lies.
Happiness is inside you.
It's in your heart and it's in your soul.
And it is in there.
You just have to find a way to find it.
Get it.
Back in just a second.
You know, a lot of people are afraid of happiness.
It's like they're afraid of success.
Have you ever met people afraid of success?
They go, oh, wait, this isn't me.
Oh, God, I'm not going to hold on to this.
And they set about in an unintentional way of destroying their success.
Like, happiness is a scary thing because you know it's not going to last.
Oh, gosh, I don't know if I lie.
I'm going to be miserable.
That's why you've heard the phrase people are miserably happy or happily miserable because it's safe.
But to go out and choose happiness, I am going to be happy today.
That makes it a quest.
It makes it, what if you fail?
Oh, I'm even worse than that.
Some people get depressed who want to stay depressed because to artificially make themselves happy, of course, which is no such thing, but to artificially make themselves happy, that's just going to be temporary.
I'm going to be even more depressed when the happiness is.
I just want to stay depressed and write it out.
But if you could artificially make yourself happy, why wouldn't you do it?
There's nothing artificial about it.
But people convince themselves it's not real.
It doesn't have staying power.
It's a shame.
It really is.
That's why somebody dunkheads vote Democrat, I think.
Frank in Old Forge, Pennsylvania.
Welcome to the EI.
The Democratic Party is organized to help you deal with your miserable self and to make you so.
Yes, Frank, welcome.
Megan Doodles from the Pizza Capital of the World, Old Forge, Pennsylvania.
Thank you, sir.
Nice to hear from the pizza capital of the world.
It's one of the reasons I live in this cold blue state.
But listen, Rush, I'm calling to let you know that Walmart helps you to buy happiness.
And as I was driving today, I heard you talking about money and happiness.
But here's what happens: you go into Walmart, and because your dollar buys more, you can physically put more stuff into your cart.
Who else cooks on a charcoal grill nowadays when you could go to Walmart and buy the big stainless steel baby and fry up some steaks the good old American way?
I mean, I think that really grab for the cash, Rush.
Asking.
Well, that's what we've been talking about.
I don't know that you could say that Walmart proves that having money or money equals happiness.
Walmart exists because people's money does go further, and that pleases them.
And so it lessens some of the concerns about it.
I think the whole point of this has been, a discussion, has been to try to dispel the notion that money has a fundamental relationship to happiness.
It really doesn't.
What it does can give you insulation and comfort.
I mean, there is a great deal of comfort or a lot less stress if you don't have to worry about paying the bills.
If the phone bill and the electric bill and all these, if you don't have to worry about those things, then that is an immense lack of stress that you have to go through.
But it'll be replaced by something because people will invent it.
They'll start telling themselves stories about something.
And before you know it, the same cycle appears, rears its ugly head in people.
And so whatever people have and whatever they accomplish and do, the basic identity, who they are, doesn't change just because they acquire a bunch of stuff is the bottom line.
And the sadness is that they think they are going to change when they get a lot of stuff.
It doesn't happen.
Be back here in just seconds.
Thank you.
All right.
Remember, I got to be gone tomorrow and Wednesday.
Special invitation, one time in a lifetime.
Can't turn it down.
We got Paul W. Smith tomorrow and Roger Hedgecock on Wednesday.
I can't wait to get back.
See you on Thursday, folks.
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