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Oct. 8, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
October 8, 2007, Monday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 podcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has not gone away.
You may think it has gone away, but it hasn't.
And I will explain and provide for you the details.
As today's excursion into broadcast excellence unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
Great to be back.
Hope you had a great weekend.
Rushlin, boy, the EIB network.
Three full hours of broadcast excellence straight ahead.
The telephone number.
If you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882.
The email address is Rush at EIBNet.com.
Well, this is getting interesting about Iran.
General Petraeus says, you know what?
We got to start thinking about their war.
He's warning Iran once again that uh that we've got evidence of them being involved in killing American soldiers.
The Brits have said that they are on board for U.S. strikes on Iran.
Uh what else?
Oh, Madeline Albright was over in Czechosla, Czech Republic, and she said war with Iran cannot be ruled out at this stage.
And of course, the Democrats are out there all concerned about, oh, wait a minute now, this is it doesn't make sense.
Democrats sounding war drums are all concerned about this on the uh on the Kook fringe base.
So there's that.
There's lots of stuff in the stacks of stuff here today.
Uh by the way, uh Barack Obama was in Greenville, South Carolina at the Redemption World Outreach Center Church, and he said this.
There is God's spirit in each and every one of us, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American.
It's waiting to be released.
That's right.
He says that we are going to have the kingdom of God on earth, God's kingdom on earth.
Well, this is fine and dandy with me.
But can you imagine?
I mean, this is the same.
Nobody's objecting to this.
The media thinks it's very clever move, actually.
Uh we've also got a sound bite of the media.
The media thinks it's very clever Hillary Clinton's latest ad incorporates 9-11.
The same media that rips Rudy Giuliani is saying how clever and well done Mrs. Clinton's ad is.
And the same thing here with Obama.
Let Bush talk about his relationship with God, or that God is speaking through him and they go nuts.
Bush is a religious nut.
But for Barack Obama, not a comment whatsoever, ladies and gentlemen.
No, it's just he just uh just trying to do everything he can here to win the election.
It's totally understandable.
More on all of this, let me just setting a table here, more on all of this as the uh program unfolds.
There's also a great set of sound bites from uh Howard Kurtz's CNN show, reliable sources on uh on Saturday.
And he wanted he asked these journalists, uh Barbara Starr and I forget who else, so what how come it's not front page news that the the body count, the deaths in Iraq are way, way down.
And they eventually essentially say, Well, it doesn't fit the narrative.
It didn't fit the narrative.
It's not a trend.
It's just it's just one month, and we can't be sure that this means anything.
And why sides that the numbers, you know, these death count numbers are really hard to verify.
Uh and of course, uh that's not the case when the uh uh uh body count numbers are going up.
I mean, it's it's a it's just a clear illustration.
They have no intention of reporting good news out of Iraq.
Um, by the way, and I predicted this.
Sandy Burglar has been hired by the Clinton campaign, the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Uh I said he would be hired after the election.
Well, that's that's when his um uh his community service of what of the sentence ends.
And he said, just in time for Mrs. Clinton to hire him in the administration, but she's hired him now.
Sandy Burglar, expert in hiding documents taking out of the National Archives in his pants and his socks, been hired on by Mrs. Clinton.
At the same time, there's an MSNBC story in my stack about how all of the neocons are siding with Rudy.
All the neocons signing up with Rudy, and of course, you have to understand how to read the drive-by media.
When they do stories about neocons, it means Jews.
It's an anti-Semitic slur, folks.
It is a tantamount to an anti-Semitic slur without it being one directly.
There's all you got to read between the lines on this stuff.
So, bottom line, uh, Rudy is hiring some neocons, and Hillary's hiring an ex-con.
In the Sandy burglar.
I want to read a quote to you from a speech.
Just a couple lines, a couple paragraphs.
And I want to I want to ask you to think about as you're listening to this, who said this.
How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on earth live in tyranny?
How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes?
I say to you, all of you, there is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.
There is nothing heroic about turning your back on America or ignoring your own responsibilities.
If you want to preserve your own freedom, you must stand up for the freedom of others with whom you disagree, but you also must stand up for the rule of law.
You cannot have one without the other.
Now, in this current climate, uh who is it that's throwing around these charges of no patriotism?
I mean, Harry Reed on the floor of the Senate one week ago today called me unpatriotic.
You all know the story, trying to do everything they could to discredit me and shut me up, all based on a smear and a lie.
So when I read this quote to you, you might think that some Republican leader gave this speech about the anti-war left that's doing everything they can to defeat the country that's redefining patriotism as hatred and dislike and disapproval of the country.
But a Republican did not say these things.
Who do you think said?
Mr. Snerdley, I can't believe you.
Yes, it was.
It was Mr. Clinton.
It was President Clinton in uh graduation speech at Michigan State University, Spartan Stadium, East Lansing, Michigan, at 1 30 in the afternoon on May the 5th of 1995.
And he was talking here about the Michigan militia.
He was talking about the people who uh he, you know, he tried to blame the Michigan militia, a whole bunch of people for inciting such anti-government rhetoric that it inspired people like Timothy McVeigh to go out and blow up the Murrah building, uh Mura building in Oklahoma City.
So now that you know it's Clinton, let me read it to you again and ask you if today's kook fringe lunatic left were to hear him say this.
What their reaction actually, I don't have to wonder because I also got a great piece in the stack here today from uh uh a writer, a blogger.
Uh actually it's it's men's news daily.
And I forget the guy's name, but I'll find it here in just a second.
His point is that the real mind number robots today are on the left.
The people that don't think, the people who are just spoon-fed a bunch of lies and end up believing it.
Uh they uh they they live to be offended, and they are not thinkers.
And so if members of the Kook fringe left heard Bill Clinton say this, they would be convinced he was talking about us.
Would they not?
But the reason I found this quote fascinating is because it could easily be aimed at his own party today.
The people who are invested in the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq, the people who are intent on destroying the character of the four-star general leading the war, the people who accused him of being a liar before he opened his mouth, the people who ran that fraudulent ad in MoveOn.org of the New York Times.
Um these are the people out there that uh have come to dislike their country so much that they define patriotism as dislike of the country, disapproval of the country.
They live in envy, they live to be offended.
You want to have some fun today?
Send an email to somebody you know uh that is a lib and wish them happy Columbus Day.
And watch what you get back.
You'll get back, what do you mean, happy Columbus Day?
Racist, sexist murderer.
He didn't discover it.
It was already inhabited, and he came and killed them and destroyed them and co-opted it and occupied it for his own.
That's what you'll get back from today's people who have been educated in the multicultural curriculum That has been pouring through American high schools and colleges for years.
American University today, Michael Barone says that he's right, the most closed-minded institution in the country today.
There is no curiosity, there is no openness, there is only suppression for something not along the party line.
It's a serious problem because it is creating people that don't think and therefore are not open to anything they don't believe.
And as I so well put it frequently, when these people who are this mind-numb robots who have their little belief systems based on the indoctrination they've received, here's something logical that challenges their belief system, they get enraged and they get mad and they strike out and attack whoever is making them think as some sort of a bogeyman who must be dealt with,
because they just can't afford to be upset, already upset as it is, living in uh in in in various states of depression, doom and gloom surrounds them.
They want everybody else to be equally miserable along with them.
Listen to before we go to the break, listen this Clinton uh quote again from 1995, the uh graduation address at Michigan State.
How dare you suggest that we in the freest nation on earth live in tyranny?
How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes?
Now, right there, don't think about all the attacks the left has made about uh the uh warrantless wiretapping program, the Patriot Act, and they're running around and they've got themselves convinced they live in a police state.
And that Bush is spying on them.
When frankly, most of you people on the left, Bush couldn't care less about your boring lives, details of your boring lives would not further his enjoyment of life at all.
These people they want to matter so much.
And then they're me, me, me.
Everything has to be about them.
So if they were to hear Clinton talk to them, how dare you suggest we in the freest nation on earth live in tyranny?
How do you call how dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes?
I say to you, all of you, the members of the class of 1995, there's nothing patriotic about hating your country.
Who hates the country today?
Draw a line, put people on the left, put people on the right.
Who hates the country today?
It's people on the left who hate the country today.
And Clinton is saying there's nothing patriotic about hating your country.
Or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government.
Well, let me change this.
Or pretending you can love your country but despise your military.
There's nothing heroic about turning your back on America or ignoring your own responsibilities.
If you want to preserve your own freedom, you must stand up for the freedom of others.
The left trying to shut down as much freedom with people they disagree with as they can, starting with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.
And by the way, when I said this is not over, wait till you hear what's going on in the House with all this.
I'll have details after the break, just to finish the Clinton quote.
You must also stand up for the rule of law.
You cannot have freedom without the rule of law.
Quick time out, folks.
We'll be back and continue right after this.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh.
Fun quotient still way up there.
I'm America's anchor man, America's truth detector, and the doctor of democracy, all combined here in one harmless, lovable little fuzzball from the American Spectator today.
Their column is entitled, The Prowler.
The Democrat Party senior leadership is feeling a rush.
Rush Limbaugh, that is.
Late last week, DNC Chair Howard Dean, Harry Reid, his deputy Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schemer, Speaker Pelosi, all signed off in some form or another, direct mail fundraising plans that will feature limbaugh for their national party.
Don't let limbaugh smear true patriotism.
That's the theme, says a DNC staffer.
We're not going to let limbaugh determine what soldiers can talk and what soldiers cannot.
So this is this is my point to their to their base.
Whatever they say about what I said, the smear is accepted.
There is no thinking.
There is no examination.
They don't want to hear anything other than what they think is the truth.
Mind numbed robots, and they exist on the left.
And so the Democrats think with this what this does.
What this says is this whole thing that went on for nine days last week and the week before was a farce from beginning to end.
It had a specific objective, two specific objectives.
One was, of course, you know, dent me as much as they could, but also create a fundraising exercise for all of these different groups.
Vote Vets.org, Media Matters.org, and the Democrat Party.
And it's like I said last week, they are running against me.
Their fundraising letters are going out about me, not Rudy Giuliani, not Fred Thompson, not Mitt Romney.
You know, if this keeps up, the Republican candidates are going to get as mad at me as the Democrats are for hogging the spotlight.
Now, I must admit, folks, I'm not all that excited about raising money for them, but it is what it is.
Here is um the real meat of the story, though.
Others on the Democrat side are pushing ahead with other plans.
Representative Henry Waxman has asked his investigative staff to begin compiling reports on limbaugh.
And fellow radio hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin based on transcripts of their shows, and to call in Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin to discuss the so-called fairness doctrine.
Limbaugh isn't the only one who needs to be made uncomfortable about what he says on the radios as a house leadership source.
We don't have as big a megaphone as these guys, but this is all political, and we'll do what we can to gain the advantage.
If we can take them off their game for a while, it'll help our folks out there on the campaign trail.
So what does this mean?
What does this mean?
It means that that Henry Waxman, who runs the government oversight committee, has officially or is going to begin investigations of me and Hannity and Levin.
He is going to have his staff paid for with your tax dollars.
Listen to these programs and review transcripts and report back to him for what?
Irregularities that they might hear on this program.
What do we have here, folks?
Henry Waxman believes that Congress and his committee in particular has as its jurisdiction the control of content of the airwaves in this country.
He wants to use his position.
He wants to use the Democrat Party and the power of government to control speech content.
Now, people throwing the word patriotism around here.
Forget the word patriotism.
Have you ever heard of anything as unamerican as this?
Here we have these are the same people who are trying to destroy Bush's spy program to catch terrorists in the act before they commit the act as spying on innocent Americans.
It's unfair, it's violating civil rights.
They want all these ex-White House officials to come up and talk about this.
And yet the very same people have now instructed Waxman and his his bunch have instructed investigators on his staff to monitor this program.
The Constitution prohibits this, specifically prohibits this.
You know, I I I think honestly believe Henry Waxman will be just as comfortable as a hack member of the Venezuelan Parliament working side by side with Hugo Chavez.
Just it's a puppet operation down there, the parliament is.
In fact, he'd probably be more comfortable down there, folks.
He could actually shut down radio stations he didn't like, right along with Hugo Chavez, and shut up hosts who disagree with him and his agenda.
It made me wonder today, what would happen to me if I began my own investigation of Senator Waxman?
What if I asked anybody out there who knows anything about Senator Waxman to send me email details of what it is you know about Senator Waxman?
And what if I had one of my staff go up and attend every one of Waxman's hearings and tape recorded it and got transcripts or monitored them on C-SPAN for irregularities and things that Waxman says and the way he questions people?
I mean, what would happen to me if I actually unidentified undertook this?
They're already starting to investigate me.
They're going to investigate Hannity.
Investigate the U.S. Congress.
A senior member of the Democrat leadership in the House has assigned his investigative staff to start monitoring this.
It's called a radio, Congressman Waxman.
It's called a radio.
You turn it on at 630 WMAL in Washington, D.C., or any number of other stations around the country is turn it on.
Or go to my website every day.
I document what I say.
Stand behind it.
I'm proud to say what I say.
Who knows where they're going to actually get their research.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
All right, before we go to the audio sound bites, I gotta deal with this.
So let's go to Marsha in Richmond, Virginia.
Marsha, you're up first today.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
It's so nice to talk to you.
I just was wondering.
I have so many big questions in my mind, and I'd love to hear you.
I know it's not call in Friday or you know open Friday, but could you explain somehow to me or every a lot of people about this NASA business and this supposed highway between Canada and It's uh baffling me, and I don't know.
Some people say it's a myth, and some people say it's you know, the future and Marcia, Marcia.
Yes, sir.
Yes.
I I appreciate your calling, but you've done something here.
You you've done something here that you don't have to do, and I want to offer this as a lesson to other callers.
Okay.
What it says on my call screener board up here is that the reason you called was to ask me, why don't I get off of this phony soldier thing because it's been two weeks.
And now you're asking me about something that we have talked about and talked about and talked about over and over and over.
Okay.
So you don't you don't you don't need to misrepresent what you want to talk about to get on this program?
I really didn't.
I thought I had to be asking.
No, I didn't.
I was trying to be more positive than what I said to the screener.
I didn't mean it that way.
Well, okay.
Well, I will accept your apology.
Thank you, Raj.
Thanks a lot.
You're more than welcome.
Now I'm going to answer the question that I think that you want it asked.
Uh uh or answered.
Uh, and or answer the question you want it answered, and that's why don't I get off of it?
I would love to get off of it.
I guess it's hard uh I know I know what the primary objective is or objection that some of you have is that I am allowing myself to be diverted from other important issues.
I would ask, ladies and gentlemen, you reserve that judgment till you've heard the whole program today.
Uh but to me, this is this is pretty important stuff, and it's not just it's not just about me personally, because I'm one of these people.
I'm uh they may be targeting me first, but eventually everybody's gonna come under this if it succeeds.
This is blatantly unconstitutional.
Henry Waxman has I've been told fifty staff members that just do investigations.
When people are called to testify up before him, they're all told, you know, make sure you got no skeleton closet before you go up there because you're gonna find everything they have to know about you.
And this is this is using the power of the government in his way in his fashion.
But now he's gonna start monitoring radio broadcasts for irregularities and sign people to it.
Uh the you you um you ought to uh I think be concerned about this because there's an there's a whole alignment on the left.
They can't beat us.
They have failed miserably with their own liberal talk shows.
They've failed every which way they can, and they have got to do something about it before the November elections.
They are worried that programs like mine will affect swing voters.
The thing that you have to understand is the Democrats cannot stand for the truth to get out there.
They can't risk it.
They can't risk for the truth about who they are and what they want to do and what their plans are to get out there as settled policy in the minds of voters.
And so the effort is ongoing here to discredit people who are trying to sound that warning, me among them.
But it's not gonna stop with me if they succeed at this.
And I've always told you, you know, you you people are like a family to me.
Uh And through all of these controversies and challenges, it's been all of you who sustained me.
It's the fact that you are there, and you will not be turned away, and you will not stop supporting the program and all of the relative aspects of it that gives me the strength to continue on this way.
I'm not a I'm not working here in a vacuum, and so uh looking at you as a family as I do, this is simply keeping you informed of what is going on.
Uh I had hoped full well that nothing more was going to come of this, but but um uh I know that that's only wishful thinking.
This is only the first of it.
This kind of stuff's gonna be going on for the next thirteen months, folks.
But I vow, and I swear, and I promise, it will not divert me from doing what I've always done because I can incorporate it all in one message.
In exposing what they're doing here, I can also continue to sound the clarion warning of what they are, who they are, and what they're trying to do.
It all works into one inemitable presentation.
Example.
I was reading by quite by accident.
This is sometimes I think that um if Obama can say it, I can say it.
Sometimes I think there is divine intervention in my life where it concerns this program.
Because yesterday I took a break.
The Steelers were creaming the Seahawks.
Just creaming them.
You know the Seahawks, their time of possession in the second half, how's this for diversity, folks?
You want their time of possession was in the second half?
Five minutes and seven seconds.
That's all they held a ball for against the Steelers.
So I said, okay, I'm gonna go to the kitchen.
I'm gonna scrounge around in there and see what the chef left over the weekend.
And there the the Sunday New York Times was that.
I never read the New York Times.
And I said, Well, while a microwave's heating up whatever it was I put in there, decided to open the New York Times.
For some reason, the business section was the second thing I found.
So I looked at it, went and grabbed some glasses out of a drawer, eyeglasses, reading glass, put them on, turn to page three, and I found the most amazing column.
I would have missed had I stuck with football yesterday.
In his column by a guy named Robert Frank.
He is an economist at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell.
He's the author of Falling Behind How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class.
This guy's college professor and economist.
This guy has access to young skulls full of mush in a university setting, not just Cornell, that is not open to inquiry anymore.
It is simply indoctrination of one particular point of view.
The university, the academy today is not what this mythical dream of it uh was and used to be.
It's not a place for curiosity and open inquiry and the open exchange of ideas.
This is it is purely for indoctrination of one particular point of view, and that's a leftist point of view.
This guy's theme is to revive the tax code and to fix the unfairness.
We need to install a consumption tax.
Get rid of the income tax and instead and instead uh implement a uh a consumption tax, meaning a large sales tax.
Which, uh, in a in a just pure philosophical shell, I happen to think is a is an interesting way to go with this, but not the way this guy gets us there.
You will not believe some of the assumptions that he makes, which are so wrong a properly educated sixth grader could know it.
Problem is there aren't any properly educated sixth graders when it comes to economics.
Well, given the political risk of posing uh proposing painful tax increases in an election year, many fear that the crisis will remain unsolved.
He goes, he's talked about how trickle down doesn't work, and even Republicans admit that Bush's tax cuts are causing increased deficits, which is absurd.
It's absurd on its face if you look at the numbers.
The revenue pouring into the treasury has exceeded everybody's expectations because of Bush's tax cuts and the capital gains tax rate reduction to 15%.
The deficit is getting smaller.
The government budget's gonna be in balance theoretically if nothing changes, in years ahead of when it was supposed to be.
So some of the assumption in here are j they're sophomoric, and yet this is an economist.
At the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University, something, and he is wrong not because he's factually wrong, he's wrong ideologically.
He's a lib, and as a lib, you believe that tax cuts build deficits.
You believe that tax cuts favor the rich, you ignore the data on these tax cuts of who is paying the lion's share of income taxes in this country.
You have to ignore all that.
And it's exactly what I was saying earlier.
You ignore it because it throws all kinds of kinks in your theory.
So you ignore it.
It proves you wrong.
So you ignore it because your ideological triumph is what matters more than any factual honesty.
And this guy has access to young skulls full of mush and a churning amount of Corv, Cornelly believe this stuff, and half of them are going to be end up as bureaucrats in the government.
Anyway, so he says, given the political risk of proposing painful tax increases in an election year, my f my fear that the crisis will remain unsolved.
Many fear it, uh, meaning out of control spending of the not enough taxation to close the deficits, uh, social security and all this sort of stuff.
Yet a simple remedy is at hand.
By replacing federal income taxes with a steeply progressive consumption, any time you see the word progressive in context of the tax code, think unfairness.
Anytime you see progressive to describe someone's ideology, think socialist.
Think liberal.
When you see the word progressive used by a liberal, red flags ought to go up.
The United States could erase the federal deficit, stimulate additional savings, pay for valuable public services, and reduce overseas borrowing all without requiring difficult sacrifices from taxpayers.
Under such a consumption tax, people would report not only their income, but also their annual savings, as many already do under 401k plans and other retirement accounts.
A family's annual consumption is simply the difference between its income and its annual savings.
That amount minus a standard deduction, say $30,000 for a family of four would be that family's taxable consumption.
Rates would start low, like at 10%.
A family that earned $50,000 and saved $5,000 would thus have taxable consumption of $15,000.
It would pay only $1,500 in tax.
Under the current system of federal income taxes, this family would pay about $3,000 a year.
Now, aside from the assumptions that Professor Frank makes here that are incorrect, all this sounds fairly reasonable.
Till you hear what's next.
Okay, folks, we now rejoin my sharing with you the details of a proposed new consumption tax by the brilliant economist and Professor Robert Frank at Cornell uh University.
By the way, you know, I I only found this, as I said, because I went to the kitchen during a lull in a football game and put something in the microwave, and I found this accidentally, we just opened the New York Times.
And I'm reading this, I got so agitated by it, I forgot what I put in the microwave.
Uh I mean I eventually went in there and got it, but it it it just so distracted me.
So now we're up to the point where he's proposed a consumption tax to replace the income tax.
And he wants to give every family of four a thirty thousand dollar consumption ex uh exemption.
And but you've got to save money.
If you earn, if your family four earns fifty and say you save five thousand, uh that means that you uh your your taxable income.
Uh we define consumption as the difference between what you earn and what you save.
The rest of it you consumed, and that would be what you're taxed on.
So you get a $30,000 exemption as a family of four.
So if you save five on a fifty thousand dollar income, then you consumed 40,000 worth of what you made, uh, leaving $15,000 taxed as your consumption.
As taxable consumption rises, the tax rate on additional consumption would also rise.
With a progressive income tax, marginal tax rates cannot rise beyond a certain threshold without threatening incentives to save and invest.
Under a progressive Consumption tax, however, higher marginal tax rates actually strengthen those incentives.
For example, consider a family that spends ten million dollars a year and is deciding whether to add a two million dollar wing to its mansion.
If the top marginal tax rate on consumption were 100%, that project would cost the family four million dollars.
The additional tax payment would reduce the federal deficit by two million.
Alternatively, the family could scale back, building only a one million dollar new wing on their mansion.
Then it would pay one million in additional tax and could deposit two million in savings.
The federal deficit would fall by a million, and the additional savings would stimulate investment, promote growth.
How?
How in the world does this happen?
You know what's going to happen.
You're gonna, it's like anything else, tax behavior, and you will change the behavior.
And so he's gonna stop consuming.
Remember, remember what was a uh Ernest Hollings out there a long time ago.
Too much consuming going on out there, Bob, and too much.
So you want to shut down consumption, and if you want to hurt people who benefit from consumption in the private sector, then go ahead and do this 100% consumption tax on certain incomes of whatever it is and above.
And then this automatically zero sum game analysis analysis that all this new tax raised reduces the deficit.
He's forgotten the fact that the first thing that happens with money that flows into Washington is it gets spent.
The federal deficit's not your fault, folks.
It's not mine.
The national debt's not your fault that it's not mine.
It's well, those of you on the government take or are contributing to it somewhat.
It's the government.
It's our it's all money starts as ours, they tax it, they take it, and they start spending it, and they spend more than they take, they borrow.
Voila, we've got a deficit.
Voila we've got a national debt.
It's not our fault.
It's not that we're not paying enough money.
It's not that we're not paying enough taxes.
We're overtaxed as it is.
The irresponsibility is inside the beltway.
And a lot of that money is spent sending back to voters to buy their votes.
We've been through all this.
You know all this.
It's it's it's a conservative economics 101.
But look at the examples.
A family that spends 10 million wants to put a $2 million wing, so make it cost them $4 million.
That'll make them scale back.
But here's the next best part.
What happens is that people in the middle class who are going into debt, trying to keep up with the gateses, as he says, would be less motivated to build additions on their houses when the rich cut back on building new wings on their mansions.
And this he says would help everybody.
It would help the self-esteem of the middle class who wouldn't feel left out.
It would close the gap between the wealthy and the non wealthy in terms of appearance, because the wealthy would not be able to showcase their wealth as much because it'd be taxed if they did.
And so we'd have much more love and togetherness as a society because there'd be much less class envy out there.
Forget the economics of this.
This is sheer 100% liberal ideology coming up with this plan.
He says the median new house in the U.S., for example, now has over 23,000 square feet, over 40% more than in 1979, even though real median family earnings have risen a little since then.
The problem's not that middle income families are trying to keep up with the Gates's.
Rather, these families feel pressured to spend beyond what they can comfortably afford because more expensive neighborhoods tend to have better schools.
A family that spends less than its peers on housing must thus sense its children to lower quality schools.
Should a recession occur, a temporary cut in consumption taxes would provide a much more powerful.
It would cause a recession.
The whole thing would cause It's unbelievable.
It is, and this is learned scholarship.
Yes, Mr. Snurdley, quick what's your what's your question?
Mm-hmm.
It is, I didn't understand the queue, just yelling and screaming in there like I was when I was reading this yesterday in my kitchen.
Uh I'm sorry I have to take a break here because of the constraints of the programming format and the official uh broadcast clock here.
Be back and continue after this.
So this graduate school professor at Cornell, Robert Frank, wants to keep you in a poor neighborhood so that you have to send your kid to a poor school rather than elevating yourself.
He wants, like all other liberals to take everything you've got, everybody else has and put it in a central fund and have smart people like him distribute it, thinking that will make life fairer.
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