That's right, Johnny Donovan, the handsome Walter E. Williams filling in.
Hey, by the way, on that note, I get letters, you know, I would never expect it from a Rush Limbaugh audience, but there's a lot of envy in the audience because I get letters from guys who look at my photo on my website, very handsome photo, walterewilliams.com.
And they say things like, they send me an email, and they say, you ought to be embarrassed having your son picture your son on your website.
Or, why don't you put a picture that's not 20 years old up there?
Folks, the photo there was taken, I think, a year and a half ago, possibly two years ago.
And I just think it's envy on behalf of you guys because you're probably sitting around your wife saying to you, oh, what a handsome guy that is.
I wish you were as handsome as he was.
And then you get angry and you write me these nasty notes.
But anyway, ladies and gentlemen, time to announce the winner of our eighth iPhone, ladies and gentlemen.
Today's iPhone winner is Mr. Terry M of Lincoln, Nebraska, listening on KLIN radio.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Congratulations, Terry.
And Terry receives an 8-gig iPhone.
He gets a check from us that covers two years of service with ATT.
He gets a one-year subscription to the Limbaugh letter and a one-year subscription to the website 24-7, Russia's website 24-7, plus a $100 gift card from BookerJava.com.
They make wonderful coffee.
To register to win the iPhone, and there are two more left, Rush is going to give them out.
To register to win the iPhone, all you have to do is go to RushLimball.com and register for Rush in a Hurry.
And Rush in a Hurry is a free flash email that goes out about an hour, hour and a half after the program, and it's a summary of the program that day.
It's just a little heads up on what's happening on the full website, and it's updated later that night.
And that's it.
That's all you have to do.
Nothing more to it.
Once you sign up and give us your email address, you'll be registered and eligible.
And as I said, and I repeat, Rush will have two more iPhones to give away next week.
So hurry up and sign up.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want to turn to some of my colleagues in the economics profession.
And I saw it in an article written in the New York Times, I believe it was July 10th or July 11th, and the title of the article, and it was written by Patricia Cohen.
I think she's a staff writer with the New York Times.
And it says, in economics department, there's a growing will to debate the fundamental assumptions.
And let me give you an idea.
Now, for many economists, questioning the free market is akin.
That's what this lady said.
It's akin to expressing belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention.
And then she goes on to, she's talking about how these economists that she interviewed are questioning the free market.
And she interviews Princeton professor Alan Blinder.
And he is the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank.
And Blinder says, well, what I have learned is anyone who says anything that sounds obliquely hostile to free trade is treated as an apostate.
And continuing his criticism of mainstream economists, he adds that efforts to intervene in the market, such as the minimum wage, industrial policy, and price controls, are viewed negatively by the economics profession.
And that's quite true.
But let's look.
Let's look at when people criticize the free market, what are they criticizing?
Well, first we have to talk about what is a free market.
Well, a free market is simply millions and millions, millions upon millions, or billions upon millions of individual decision makers, you and I, you and me, and we're all engaged in peaceable voluntary exchange, pursuing what we see in our own best interest.
That's what a free market is.
Now, people who denounce the free market, people who criticize the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, these are people that believe that they're more intelligent and they have superior wisdom to the masses, and they believe that they have been ordained by God to forcibly impose that wisdom that they have on the rest of us.
Now, these people who want to impose their wisdom on the rest of us, interfere with the decision of millions and millions of decision makers, they have what they consider to be good reasons for restricting the freedoms of others.
But I'm here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, every single tyrant that has ever existed has had what the tyrant believed to be a good reason for restricting the freedoms of others.
Now, see, tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks that they ought to do.
And that's why they are against the free market, because the free market implies voluntary behavior.
So they want to replace the market with economic planning, or as Blinder, the professor at Princeton, industrial policy.
Now, I'll give you, ladies and gentlemen, a definition of economic planning that will last you the rest of your lives.
Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of somebody else's plan by the powerful elite.
Let me give you a few examples.
I might plan to buy a car, a shirt, or some apples from a foreign producer because I see it in my own best interest.
The powerful elite will say, Williams, we're going to supersede your plan through tariffs and quotas because we think you ought to make the purchase from a domestic producer.
Or my daughter might plan to work for the hardware store guy down the street for $4 an hour.
She says it's okay.
He says it's okay.
Her mother says it's okay.
Her father says it's okay.
But the powerful elite will say, we're going to supersede that plan because it's not being transacted at the prices we think it ought to be transacted at.
And so that's what economic planning is.
It's the tramping of somebody else's plan by the powerful elite.
Now, in this column, or in this article written by Cohen, she goes on to interview an economist, formerly from Princeton, now at Berkeley, I believe.
And she says that he's, and his name is David Card.
She says that he's done groundbreaking research on increases in the minimum wage.
Now, there are literally hundreds of studies that show that increases in minimum wage cause unemployment for the least skilled worker, particularly teenagers and particularly black teenagers.
But Professor Card's study asserts that increases in minimum wage actually increases employment.
Now, beside a number of economic reviews that show that his study has statistical flaws in it, his conclusion doesn't even pass the smell test.
For example, if increases in minimum wage actually increased employment, wouldn't that be wonderful?
That is, whenever there's a high unemployment anywhere in the world, then governments could eliminate it by just increasing the minimum wage.
It does not make sense, does it?
Also, and this is going to be hard for me to say, she did an interview with Robert Reich.
I don't say it as good as Rush does.
And, you know, remember Robert Reich, he served in Clinton's administration as labor secretary.
And he says that these wonderful economists who are questioning free market theories want to speak to the reality of our times.
Now, that's incredible.
He's just a pretend economist.
But that's incredible because reality, ladies and gentlemen, doesn't depend on whether it's 1907 or 2007.
But Robert Reich probably thinks that the reality of the laws of demand depends on what year it is.
That's nonsense.
I wonder also whether he thinks that the laws of gravity also depend on what year it is.
Now, if you look at this article, if you read this article, you'll find that the views expressed by some of these economists who were interviewed by Mrs. Cohen, while out of the mainstream of the majority of America, most economists, are solidly in the mainstream of mankind's traditional vision.
That is, throughout mankind's history, the right to pursue one's goals in a peaceful, voluntary manner without direction and control, this idea has always won a hostile reception.
And there's little that's older in human history than the idea that some people should give orders and others should obey.
And this is what these economists are talking about.
And I think that they've missed the boat.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Walter Williams sitting in for Rush, and Rush will be back on Monday.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
Before we go to phones, let me give you a little, I wrote a column about this several weeks ago, and it related some of my experiences as a graduate student in economics at UCLA.
And when I attended UCLA, it was probably ranked 10 or 11th in the country in terms of economics department.
Anyway, one of my memories, I have many, many memories of my graduate student days at UCLA.
It was during a faculty graduate student coffee hour, and I was having an informal conversation with Professor Armin Alshon of the 20th century.
He has to be one of the top 10 economists of the 20th century.
And he was also one of my very tenacious mentors.
Anyway, during this conversation, I was trying to impress Professor Alshon with my knowledge of what in statistics they call the type 1 and type 2 error.
And I was telling him that my wife, Mrs. Williams, she assumes that everybody is her friend until they prove differently.
And I was pointing out to Professor Alshon: while such an assumption maximizes the number of friends she has, it also maximizes the probability for her to be betrayed.
And I said, unlike my wife, I assume that everybody is my enemy until they prove that they're my friend.
And I said that, well, of course, this reduces the number of friends that I would have, but it also reduces the chances of betrayal.
And so Professor Alshon, donning a very mischievous smile, he said to me, he asked, he said, Williams, have you considered a third alternative?
And I said, what is that?
He said, have you considered that people don't give a damn about you one way or the other?
And when he asked that, I was a little bit taken back and a little bit insulted.
But our conversation ended that.
And that was very typical of Professor Alshon to say something profound and perhaps controversial without much comment and then let you think about it.
And I thought about it.
I thought about it for, you know, maybe in the early part, maybe a couple years.
I thought about it once in a while during my early professional career.
And I concluded that he is right.
I conclude that for the average person, people don't give a damn about you one way or the other.
And so let's do a thought experiment on this so far as race is concerned in our country.
Let's apply it to issues of race.
Now, listening to some black people, one might think that white people are engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to undermine the achievements of black people.
And the evidence for these people who take that position is the large number of black men in prison, the low black academic achievement, and poverty.
And for some, the racism is the root of high black illegitimacy and family breakdown.
Now, if you ask the question, well, are white people obsessed with and engaged in a conspiracy against black people?
I'm kind of guessing no.
And now here's an experiment that you should do.
Walk up to the average white person and ask him, how many minutes today have you been thinking about a black person?
Now, if the person that you were talking to was not a Klansman or a gushing do-gooder, he'd probably say zero minutes.
I haven't thought about black people at all.
And if you ask him whether he's part of some kind of conspiracy to undermine the achievement of black people, he'd probably look at you like you're crazy.
Now, by the same token, if you ask me, Williams, how many minutes today have you been thinking about white people?
Now, I probably say, well, you have to break down the time interval into smaller units like nanoseconds for me to be able to give you a good answer.
And it'd be very small.
Now, because people don't care about you one way or the other does not mean that they wish you goodwill, ill will, or no will.
Now, if Professor Alshon's vision of the world is correct, then what are its implications for anybody?
Black, white, purple, or green.
The major implication is that one's destiny, for the most part, is in its own hands.
That is, how you make it in this world, for the most part, depends on what you do as opposed to whether people like or dislike you.
In other words, in order to be, and which was kind of implied in some of the questions in the last hour, in order to be successful in this world, what do you have to do?
Well, you have to find ways to please your fellow man.
You have to find what your fellow man wants that he does not have.
And after you find out what he wants that he does not have and is willing to pay for, then acquire the necessary skills, education, and talents to provide it.
And whether people care about one another or not, I think is largely irrelevant.
So, matter of fact, I think that, and the cure for poverty, here's the cure for poverty: there are four things you need to do, and it's almost a written guarantee that you will not be poor.
One, graduate from high school.
Two, don't have children until you're married.
Three, stay married, take any kind of job, and stay out of jail.
Now, matter of fact, according to the census, people who have that characteristic, only 8% of them are poor, as opposed to, let's say, among blacks, and 8% of blacks are poor, as opposed to something like 25-26% of total poverty among blacks as a whole.
And so, it's almost a no-brainer not to be poor.
That is, find ways to please your fellow man, and you won't be poor.
That's how people become very rich.
Bill Gates is very rich because he's found out how to please his fellow man, how to get Walter Williams to cough up $300 for his windows, and to do so voluntarily.
We're back, and it's Walter Williams sitting in for the vacation rush, and he will be back on Monday.
One more thing before we go to the phones: I was reading an article and it says, The NAACP plans to bury the N-word.
And so, I first off, I thought, well, they're going to get rid of nappy because they got pretty upset over Nappy.
And so, I say, that can't be it.
Anyway, the article goes on.
It says, a mock funeral is held in Detroit.
And the N-word they're talking about is nigger.
And by the way, the people who I hear use that word the most are black people.
And this was, see, I'm 71 years old, though, you know, you probably have to hear look at me and think I'm 45 or something in late 30s, something like that.
But when I was coming up, even among black people, to call another black person a nigger, that was fighting words.
But today, it's not.
I don't know, but I hope the NAACP is successful in burying the N-word.
Let's go to the phones and welcome Dale from Las Vegas to the show.
Welcome to the show, Dale.
Hi.
I just wanted to say I used to be a Reagan Republican in the middle class, and I've been listening to you, and I just have to disagree with you.
Well, that's fine.
And so, matter of fact, when I get outside, when I give lectures, I tell people, I'm not necessarily trying to get people to agree with me.
What I'm trying to do is to challenge conventional wisdom so that you will have another thing to think about.
That's all I'm trying to do.
You know, I just heard your comment about the NAACP.
Yeah.
Are they burying Mark Twain's books, too?
Because when I was young and in school, they said Mark Twain was a great American author.
Yeah.
And he used that word.
And if that word is buried, then you're going to have to bury all his books, too.
And some other books as well.
I don't know what they have in mind.
But I think that maybe the NAACP is doing something good because a lot of these rappers, I mean, they speak disgusting language, and particularly about black women.
But you didn't call about that, did you?
Well, no, I didn't.
I wanted to say that I've managed to fall through the cracks.
I put myself through college.
I got a four-year degree, magna cum laude, in manufacturing.
I never in my life dreamed that my own country would outsource manufacturing because we won World War II by having a tremendous manufacturing capability.
You were talking about Henry Ford.
Now, if you want to buy something, it's going to be from somewhere else.
If we get in a serious conflict, I don't think we're going to.
Well, look, militarily, we're the mightiest country on the face of this earth, and I don't see anything in the future that's going to stop it.
And then, moreover, if we're going to fight a serious war, it should be over in a few minutes.
I'm not talking about these little tap on the backs like we see in Iraq.
I really disagree with you because without any money, you can't afford to have those carriers out there.
And if we base our economy on low-tech, low-wage jobs, service jobs, the manufacturing's gone, those people aren't going to pay up to the current services.
Service jobs are wonderful.
For example, now, a lot of our textile industry has gone overseas, right?
More than just that.
Okay, right.
But, however, I mean, can you imagine a textile worker?
You know, he's maybe at a sewing machine or at some kind of loom.
Can you imagine him saying, I hope my little Susie, when she grows up, she'll have a machine of her own?
Or do you think he's saying, well, I hope my little Susie, when she grows up, she'll be an accountant, she'll be a nurse, she'll be a doctor, she'll be all these other so-called service jobs that you are demeaning.
I'm not demeaning them.
I've had to work them, but.
But aren't they wondering?
Isn't it wonderful for that particular textile worker?
What do you think he's saying?
Do you think she's saying, I want little Susie to have her own sewing machine, or do you think he's saying, I'd like for her to be a nurse?
Well, I think you're talking about a different era.
There hasn't been anybody sewing in the United States.
Well, operating a loom.
You think my little Susie, I'd like for her to operate this loom.
Look, the point of progress is the destruction of jobs.
That's the point of when, you know, for example, I was given testimony in Congress a number of years ago, and I was saying to the congressman, he says, our job, Professor Williams, is to save jobs.
And I asked him, what would you have done to save the stagecoach driver's job?
I mean, what would you have done to save the Iceman's job?
I mean, that is the destruction, what Schumpeter's call, he calls it creative destruction.
And so what that means, let me give you another example.
Let me finish.
He says with Schumpeter, what that means is that as progress is made, some jobs go away and other jobs take its place.
For example, in 1972, the communications industry hired 474,000 long-distance telephone operators.
Today, they hired less than 60,000.
Now, all those jobs have been destroyed.
Now, what has happened is that back in 1971, there were roughly 90 million long, 90 9 billion long-distance calls.
Today, there are 100 billion.
So technology has replaced those workers.
Well, should those workers say, well, gee, my job has been outsourced to a machine?
Should they lament that?
The middle class is being completely destroyed.
If you walk around a big city, there's something going on.
And I used to quote your words almost word for word.
And it's not coming to pass.
The price of things is so high now that the bottom rung on the economic ladder.
The price of what is so high?
Okay, what's a gallon of milk go for?
Well, I don't know, about three, three something.
Well, you haven't shopped in a while because last week I went to the grocery store.
It was $4.79.
Oh, well, that's – and you know what?
If it's $479, and matter of fact, one of the reasons why milk prices are high is because of your government, where they mandate minimum prices on milk.
I studied economics very well, and I was a Reagan Republican.
What do you think about minimum prices?
Well, what I'm saying is I believe in a free market even now, but we have some fundamental problems when we don't control citizenship.
The fundamental problem with – number one, we do not have a free market.
That is, there's a whole lot of – Right.
Okay.
I'm glad to hear you say that.
There's a whole lot of government intervention, and what we need to do is to eliminate some of the government intervention.
I think it's too late for that.
Oh, well, yeah, because many Americans are saying we want more government.
We want more government.
We want government to do this.
That's just complicating the problem, but you're still talking about black and white issues.
Let me tell you, we ought to band together because it's not just black.
Whites aren't even reproducing well enough to replace their own white.
There's not going to be enough whites to fight with anymore.
And there's other people in the world who are much more of a problem.
Well, I think you kind of changed the topic.
We weren't talking about that, were we?
They're all tied together, though.
You're saying that the market is broken.
Yeah, well, the market is broken.
Well, what I got to do, what I have to do right now is not connect the dots, but go out and try to make some money for us.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, Walter Williams filling in for Rush.
You know, folks, and before we go to the phone, I think that people are complaining, they think somebody ought to do something for them.
Somebody ought to give them something.
And this is not the way I was raised.
I remember my, I was raised very, very poor.
And we lived in the Richard Allen Project in North Philadelphia.
And my stepfather, he used to say that the way to success is to come early and stay late and work your butt off.
And when you get a job, try to do that job so well that the boss is going to wonder to himself that how in the world did he make it without you?
I mean, that's a ticket of success.
That is come early, stay late, and try to be prepared.
And people are wondering, why did the government do this?
When did the government take care of that?
That surely was not the upbringing of many, many Americans of the past.
But unfortunately, it's a lesson for today.
Let's go to Toledo, Ohio, and welcome Gary to the show.
Dr. Williams.
Yes.
Hello.
Well, I wanted to take issue with you on this government intervention.
And I'm not a very pro-government person, you might say.
I don't like government intervention very much, but I did take the Wackawana coal mine tour up in Pennsylvania some years back.
And something really struck me there was the way they used children in these mines and the most dangerous jobs in the mines they had the children doing.
Well, that was stopped by government intervention, which, you know, in that particular case was certainly a good thing.
Well, you know what?
Many of the child labor laws that protected children from working in dangerous mines and factories now protect children from working in air-conditioned offices.
What do you think about that?
Well, I don't like that.
I don't like that at all.
Okay, but on the other hand, now, here's a family of six.
They're very, very poor.
And so if they're going to eat every day and have a roof over their head, maybe everybody needs to be working.
And so somebody says, well, we're not going to allow your children to work.
Well, that makes the family poor.
I think that whether my child works is not up to some congressman.
It's up to me and the child's mother.
It's nobody else's business.
Well, unless you send that child into the coal mines to be the.
Well, if I wanted to work in the coal mine, it's still my business.
It's nobody else's business because that's my child.
Well, I mean, but now here's what now here's what a politician would say.
I encountered a politician.
I'm not going to mention her name.
It was from Colorado.
She was apologizing in Colorado.
But we were at some conference and we were talking about education.
And she said to me, Well, Professor Williams, I care about your daughter.
I care about every child.
And so I asked her, What's my daughter's name?
And she couldn't come up with her name.
And she's going to care about my daughter.
And she doesn't even know my daughter's name.
So anyway, well, thanks for calling.
And let's go to Burlington, Washington, and welcome Marty to the show.
Well, thank you very much, Walter.
I appreciate it.
And I agree with you.
You get up early and you work hard.
And I feel as though I'm successful only because I'm not a dependent.
But I own my own little business.
And what aggravates me is that I have to comply to all kinds of rules and regulations in the marketplace and then pay for them, of course.
And yet, we as a country open our arms to other countries that don't have to comply by these same rules.
So it's pretty hard for us to manufacture and compete no matter what.
I hear that very often, Marty.
And so I'd like to see us turn the table if our government feels as though they need the money because we're very compassionate and loving people.
If we want to need this money, then instead of coming after us that are trying to make it on our own, why don't we go after these imports and stuff like they do to us this matter?
Wait, wait, wait a minute.
Wait a minute, Marty.
Now, it's quite right.
You're absolutely right.
That the EPA, OSHA, and all these other organizations, they can impose costs on you, but they have no jurisdiction in Taiwan.
Now, so what I would do, now, I think what international trade does, it reveals the cost of many of these regulations that are handicapping American firms.
And, you know, matter of fact, I was interviewed for the vice presidency of a firm a number of years ago, a very, very big firm, and I was asked by the people who are interviewing me, what would I do about these imports that are killing us?
And I say, well, look, I would get together with my other competitors and I would go to Congress and say, we're going to shut down unless you end these onerous regulations that are making us uncompetitive relative to our competition around the world.
That's what I would do.
And so, but however, a lot of people will say, just I think as you're suggesting, Marty, that because other countries have restrictions on our imports, that we should retaliate by having restrictions on their imports.
Well, that does not make a lot of sense because if you're saying, well, look, if Japan does not allow our cheap goods to come in, if Japan doesn't allow our rice to come in, and as a result, the Japanese people, consumers, pay four times the world price for rice, well, the way that we ought to retaliate against Japan is to get even with Japan is to force Americans to pay four times the price of some kind of thing.
That is, and it's almost like, I mean, you and I are in a boat at sea, and I shoot a hole in my end of the boat.
Now, what are you going to do?
You're going to say, Williams, I'm going to get even with you.
I'm going to shoot a hole in my end of the boat too.
We'll both sink.
And so, you know, retaliatory pressures are really just kind of saying, if one country screws its citizens, we're going to retaliate by screwing our citizens.
I don't think that's right.
I would just say to Japan, you go and screw your citizens.
We're not going to do that to Americans.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Back to the phones for one more call to shut down a week of excellence in broadcasting.
Let's welcome our show, Angela from Pittsburgh.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Walter, I want to thank you for speaking in the past at Grove City College, one of the finest private institutions in the country that accepts no government funding directly or indirectly.
That's a nice plug for Grove City College, which, by the way, is a great college.
And it accepts no federal money, and it has students who are in financial need, and it takes care of them itself.
That proves that if we try, we can do it, can't we?
Absolutely.
Well, thank you very much for waiting and letting the audience know that, ladies and gentlemen, now, you cannot forget, you cannot forget to register to win the iPhone.
Now, Russia is going to give out too.
And matter of fact, I'm going to register as soon as I get off the air.
I'm going to try to get an iPhone for Mrs. Williams for a gift.
You know, you guys always ask me about what kind of gift I'm going to get, Mrs. Williams.
And matter of fact, you guys really bug me with this because I think you ought to get your own gift ideas.
And for those of you who aren't on this, one year ago, it all started, I guess, several years ago, I got Miss Williams some golf shoes.
She doesn't golf, but they have cleats and she doesn't slide around on the ice when she's washing my car in the winter.
Anyway, and so you know, the guys always start asking me what kind of gifts.
But the point is, is to try to win the iPhone.
Rush is going to give away two of them next week.
Just register for the iPhone by going to rushlimball.com.
Register for Rush in a Hurry.
It's free.
And flash email will come out to you letting you know what's going on in the show and what's going to be up on the next.