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June 7, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:31
June 7, 2010, Monday, Hour #3
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That is absolutely right, uh John O Donovan.
And um speaking of the ladies, speaking of ladies, you know, the reason if you go to my photo, you go to my webpage, you see my photos, Walter E. Williams.com, and it's a handsome photo.
And ladies just adore it, as I was telling you before.
And one of the reasons I stay in good shape for a man who's born in 1936, is that I lift weights four or five times a week.
I ride a bicycle.
Matter of fact, in the gym where I work out, the um the owner of the gym, uh, she's I told you this last time, but she's really insisting on it now.
She said she brought me a cutoff tank top.
And so I said, I'm cold in this.
You know, she said, Well, where's she said?
I said, Why do you want me to wear it?
She said, for eye candy for the girls that are excising.
I said, Well, you know, I'm old.
I said, What's eye candy?
She said, They'd like to look at a little bit of flesh.
And so, anyway, that's me.
You look at my photo, Walter E. Williams.com.
Anyway, let's get down to business.
Um here's a uh article in the New York Times.
And it's titled, White House and Allies Set to Build Up the Healthcare Law.
Now, because most Americans are against the health care laws.
And so Congress buying off votes, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed buying off votes, they got it passed in a lot of intimidation.
And so they got a bill passed that most Americans, matter of fact, I think I was reading some, maybe it was Rasmussen saying that 58% of Americans want to repeal it, the health care law.
Anyway, there's setting up uh an elaborate campaign to sell the public on the law, including new tax exempt group that will spend millions of dollars on advertising to beat back the attacks on the measure and the Democrats who voted for it.
I think let's see, Americans will see the first evidence of the public relations on Tuesday when Obama travels to Wheaton, Maryland to conduct a nationally advertised nationally televised question and answer session with older citizens to trump up the law's most popular features, a $250 rebate checks to help Medicare beneficiaries pay for prescription drugs.
Now, where is he getting this $250 rebate check?
Do you think it's coming from Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy?
Which one?
Or is he ripping off some American through the tax law?
Now you say, well, maybe he's going to just raise corporate profit tax because profits are evil.
We just impose a tax on corporations.
That's a gimmick that politicians play on the people, and it's been very successful, but it requires that you do not understand economics to go for that trick.
That is corporations do not pay taxes.
Let me state that again.
Corporations do not pay taxes.
Corporations, ladies and gentlemen, are legal fictions.
Only people pay taxes.
If a tax is levied on a corporation, the corporation will do one of three things or some combination thereof.
One, it will raise the price of the product.
It will lower the dividends to stockholders.
It will lay off workers.
So who pays the tax?
The corporation is just a tax collector.
It collects taxes and gives them to the government, but it does not pay taxes.
Think about this in the following way.
Let's say you own your house.
And I come around to you.
I'm, you know, I work for the city.
I come around to you and I say, I'm not going to tax you.
I'm going to tax your land.
Well, does land pay taxes?
No, land does not pay taxes.
You pay taxes.
Only people pay taxes.
But the Congress and politicians are able to exploit this uh ignorance.
And matter of fact, in economics and economics literature, it's called the the incidence of taxation.
An incidence of taxation has to do with the fact that just because an entity, a taxes levied on an entity, it does not mean that that entity pays the tax.
Anyway, the White House has allies to set up the, you know, to try to sell the American people on the health care bill.
You know, I think a lot of people believe that health care is a right.
Well, that is utter nonsense because people don't have an understanding what is a right.
Let me just briefly explain what a right is.
A right is something that exists simultaneously among people.
A right does not confer any obligation on another.
Let me give you an example of this.
My right to free speech does not impose an obligation on another person, except that of non-interference.
Or my right to travel, to travel to Texas, to travel to California.
That right does not impose an obligation on somebody else.
That is, we share these rights simultaneously.
Now, when somebody is talking about a right to health care, whether he can pay for it or not, that's not a right.
That because that imposes that's not a right in the in the traditional usage of the term, anyway, because that imposes an obligation on somebody else.
That is, if you have a right to medical care, whether you can pay for it or not, it of necessity means that somebody else does not have a right to what he earned.
Because the government does not get the money from the tooth ferry or Santa Claus, it has to get it from somebody.
And so your right, if you say you have a right to medical care that you did not earn, or you have a right to housing or food that you did not earn, it of necessity means somebody else must not have a right to something that he did earn.
Now, the way the rights are used now by the by the left in our country, and so and many of the right as well, my right to travel free freely would mean that you have to pay for an airline airline ticket for me and and hotel accommodations,
or my right to free speech would impose an obligation on others to buy me a studio, to buy me a microphone.
Ladies and gentlemen, they are not rights, they are merely wishes.
Now, if you say that if you wish everybody had health care, everybody had insurance, then I would agree with you, because I wish every American had it too.
I wish every American had a nice car, nice house, had a good job, but it's not a right.
So there's a difference between wishes and rights.
And when you allow government to say, well, we're gonna create this right, we're gonna create that right.
Even though people don't have the money, then it's taking away rights from other people.
Is that fair?
Is that any kind of justice?
Now, so you say, well, Williams, well, what are we going to do?
What could we do without a food stamp program?
We absolutely need a food stamp program.
Well, when people say that we absolutely need this program or that program, I always ask, what did we do before?
I mean, in the case of food stamps, when the poor Irish were landing in 1840s, fleeing the potato famine, landing in New York without anything.
Was there a food stamp program?
Or did they just die on the streets?
Were you stepping over dead bodies all over New York because of people starving together, uh uh starving?
That's not a part of our history.
So we have to always ask the question, what did we do before?
And more importantly, as I was talking to Rand Paul, what is the constitutional authority for the federal government be doing at?
Well, this is Walter Williams filling in for a rush, and we'll be back with your calls after this.
Walter Williams, uh sitting in for Russia, and you can be on with us by calling 2800, 282-2882.
There's another little piece I was reading about the um about the devastation in Haiti as a result of the earthquake.
Now, uh Haiti had a earthquake of 7.1, I think it was seven.
Anyway, it killed 200,000 people or more.
The question is, in California, California's Loma Prieta earthquake was 7.1 on the Richter scale.
More violent.
And something like I think less than 100 people were killed.
In 1906, there's a San Francisco earthquake.
It was 7.8.
And 3,000 people were killed.
And Chile, they had 8.8 earthquake, and just 500 people are killed.
How come so many people were killed in Haiti?
Well, it's very easy.
They have they don't have property rights in Haiti.
It's a it's a socialist regime.
Highly socialist.
That's one of the reasons.
And that is why build strong buildings that will last a hundred years or so, or two hundred years, or be very safe if you don't have private property rights.
They can just be taken away from you.
And so if you want to help poor people anywhere in the world, you want to insist that they develop a private property rights system.
You know, a lot of people say, well, let's help poor nations by population control.
Well, that is utter nonsense.
The population doesn't have anything to do with whether a country is rich or poor.
Let me give you an example.
In in the former Zaire, I think it's now was a Belgian cong, and it was a Congo or something like that, in the former Zaire, there are roughly 39 people, the population density is 39 people per square mile.
In Hong Kong is close to 300,000 people per square mile.
Which do you think is richer?
Hong Kong or Zaire?
It's Hong Kong.
Yeah, actually, when you think about people saying, well, you gotta keep control of the population, keep in mind that human beings are valuable resources.
As a matter of fact, they are the ultimate resource.
Think about it this way.
Or answer this question.
Why didn't George Washington have a cell phone?
He could really keep in good contact with his troops if they all had cell phones.
And think about it.
That is all of the physical goods necessary to make a f a cell phone were around during George Washington's time.
They were around during the caveman's time.
How come the caveman did not have a cell phone?
How come he did not have radio, uh a radar?
How come he did not have computers?
Well, it has to do with human the human brain.
It has to do with human beings.
That is, they are the ultimate resource, not land, not capital, not um entrepreneurial talent, it's the human brain and private property rights.
Let's uh let's stop there.
Let's go to the phone and let's talk to Johnny from Joplin, Missouri.
Welcome to the show, Johnny.
Hello, Walter.
Hi.
Hey, you're really uh touching on some good stuff today, uh, really elevating the discussion.
Uh listen, your your last comment you're making on property rights, you know, about the human being being uh indispensable resource.
Uh you know, I think a certain uh individual named uh Andrew Galombos, he once said that uh property rights is basically the right for a man to own himself and all non-procreative procreative derivatives of his life, that is anything that he mixes his labor with.
And as a human being, as a man, as a woman, we're we're endowed with, as it says in the direct declaration of independence, unalienable rights, that is there's nothing that's going to change who we are, it's in our nature.
We have the power to create these things.
Like what you say the cell phone or any of these other things.
And whenever you get into a situation where you have a government that is overreaching its boundaries that are outlined within the Constitution, and you get out of a like what you had mentioned earlier in the show about these negative rights versus positive rights,
I think that's uh I think the best way that I can put it is something that a person from my neck of the woods down in uh Exeter, Missouri, Mr. William Roberts had a revelation once and said uh that there's an all-out war between natural law and positive law.
That is that the government arrogates unto itself all of the natural law, and I'm paraphrasing here, I'd like it returns it back to us, codified, licensable, revocable, taxable.
Well, look at it in the following sense, in the following sense.
The under natural law, that is, I own myself, and I have certain rights that you mentioned in terms in terms of property.
Now, I cannot delegate to government rights that I do not have.
For example, I do not have a right to take your money and go out and buy a car.
So therefore, I cannot delegate to government to take your money and go and give it to me to go out and buy a car.
That is natural law are those if you read uh uh uh John Locke's second treatise on government, and that's what our founders read, and that's how they wrote the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence based on natural law and private property rights, and the job of government is to protect those things.
Now, Congress, you know, the founders of our nation, they did not trust Congress.
They had utter distrust for the United States Congress.
And if you just look at read through the Constitution of the United States, you find negative statements about Congress.
That is, you find, look at the language.
Uh look at the language of the Bill of Rights.
It says, Congress shall not infringe.
Congress shall not disparage, Congress shall not prohibit.
Now, if the framers did not think that Congress would do all these things, why in the world they put them in there?
Because they did not trust the United States Congress.
Now, I will tell you one thing, ladies and gentlemen.
When we die, and at our next destination, we wake up and we see anything that looks like the Bill of Rights on the wall, we know that we are in hell.
That is because a bill of rights in heaven would be an insult to God because God would not do all those things.
And so this is but however the American people nowadays they've left the ideas of the founders.
They just love Congress.
And you know why they love Congress?
Because Congress does things for them that if they did the identical thing, they would go off to jail.
That is, Congress takes other Americans' money and gives it to them, and if they did the same thing privately, they would go to jail.
This is Walter Williams, and we'll be back with more good news.
We're back.
Walter Williams sitting in for Rush, and the number is 800-282-2882.
A little tidbit, folks.
Um it's from Dallas News.
And it's written by Tornell D. Hobbs.
And it says, Black leaders leaving Dallas schools along with students.
And the story goes on to say that some leaders of civil rights group that once battled for equal education in Dallas schools are now urging black parents to send their kids elsewhere.
Juanita Wallace, she's the president of the Dallas NAACP.
And she said, quote, we know that Hispanics are really taking over the school district.
The whites are completely gone, and now blacks are going.
That's the end of the quote.
And it goes on with some st uh statistics that uh Dallas School District's overall enrollment of 150,000 students, fairly flat.
The percentage of Hispanic students has scored has soared to 68%.
The percentage of black students, the Dhamma group from 1975 to 1994 has dropped to 26%.
White students now make up five percent of the district, down sharply from 57% in 1970.
What's going on?
Well, some black leaders say that the district's focus on Hispanic children has caused black veteran teachers to lose their jobs.
Well, I hope they work it out in Dallas.
But in the meantime, let's go to the phones and welcome Mel from Lamar, South Carolina.
Welcome to the show.
Hello, Professor Williams.
Can you hear me?
Uh yeah, I can hear you very well.
Well, thank you for coming.
We have excellent audio equipment here.
Well, since we're on the phone over there.
And I have an excellent engineer, uh, Mike Malone.
I am a retired mechanical engineer.
Yeah.
And I had some numbers on the Social Security uh information that you talked a little bit ago about using them up in three or four or five years, and I thought might be of interest in case you wanted some nun numbers from a mechanical engineer.
I contributed to Social Security when I was in high school in 1952, all the way until 1996 when I retired as a after 32 years as a professor of mechanical engineering.
So over that time period I had paid in fifty-three thousand dollars to Social Security, and my employer had paid in an equivalent amount if one considers that I should have earned interest on that money over those years, and if you compounded the interest, that money would have been worth about a hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars when I started receiving Social Security in 1998.
But but did it get that interest there?
Well, that's a question that your screener raised my question.
You know, at the time that I was putting money in, I was able to buy a a savings bond that earned four percent interest.
And granted, our government hasn't done very well, and I'm not a I'm not a big fan of Social Security.
And which would you have been better off?
Putting your money uh in a private retirement program or the Social Security.
I put it in a private retirement plan out of my own pocket, and that would have been better off.
There's no question about it.
Absolutely.
But let me finish.
You know, you said that a person would have used up what they put in in four or five years.
Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold hold it, let's go back.
That I said that a person who retires in 1980, who retired in 1980, right, takes out, I mean he gets paid all that he ever put into Social Security in three or four years.
I I heard you say that, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think wait a minute.
And the person entering the workforce, in order to break even with what he put in Social Security, he'll have to live until he's ninety-two or ninety-three.
Because keep in mind that if you look at your Social Security book, I mean the little accounting sheet, like in 1952, I doubt whether you paid more than sixty dollars in Social Security taxes.
Oh, much less than that.
I think I'm still earning fifty cents an hour.
Yeah, right.
So so for many, many years, uh I I I don't have the numbers in the tables in front of me, for many year many, many years, people didn't it at Social Security di tax did not cost them a hundred dollars a year, and now it's costing th uh two, three, and four thousand dollars a year.
Right, right.
So that's what I mean.
That is those people who spent a large part of their lives paying Social Security tax that was under a hundred dollars, they they they draw that all that they put in when they're eighty, you know, I'm sorry, in three or four years if they retired at eighty.
Well, I thought you might be interested in the number, even though I'm not a fan of AARP because they tell the people that it's their money and they put it in there and nobody can take it away from them.
Well, that's a crock.
Yeah, the Supreme Court said that's not taking it away from their children and their grandchildren.
But but I have been on Social Security for twelve years at the present rate that it's going, I will have taken out all of that I put in in about six more years.
Well, well, well, i g good for you, but everybody else, everybody else, they're in bad shape.
That is those people who retire in nineteen thirty or nineteen thirty-five, I think that to pay today's level of benefits, promised benefits, the social security tax is gonna have to be over thirty percent, and that does not include all the other taxes.
Let's go to let's go to uh Joe in and Arbor.
Welcome to the show, Joe.
Hey, Professor, how are you doing?
Okay.
Yeah, um, I just wanted to make a comment that um uh from what I've read, the federal government started to move away from our founder's ideals all the way back with the start of Lincoln.
And that um, you know, as bad as slavery was the I from w uh what I understand, the Southern states still had the right to uh their own uh Well to see secede the the Constitution would have never been ratified.
It would have never been ratified if states did not think that they had the right to secede.
That is the states came together as principles and they created the federal government in 1787 as their agent and principles can fire the agent.
And if you read the par the if you read the Treaty of Paris in 1783, where the when the war came to an end between England and the colonies, there were thirteen separate nations created.
Uh thirteen separate nations, and these nations came together and made the federal government their agent, and they fired them.
And matter of fact, and matter of fact, the the first secessionist movement started in New England because the people were upset about Thomas Jefferson's unconstitutional uh Louisiana purchase.
They did not like that at all.
And so if you if you read the history, you uh you see that the states always had a uh a right to secede.
Now here's the issue that was settled by the war between the states in 1861.
The war settled by brute force that states could not secede.
We lost six hundred thousand people in that war.
Right.
And so now that states cannot secede, since that issue was settled, then the federal government can do anything it wants to the states.
It's very much Like if your wife cannot divorce you, then you treat her any way you want.
That is what controls a lot of what controls your treating uh how you treat your wife and how she treats you is your power to exit.
But when you eliminate the power to exit, then people act any way they want.
And so right now the Ninth and Tenth Amendments that were states' rights amendments, they don't mean anything.
You go to the Supreme Court arguing your your rights under the Tenth Amendment or the Ninth Amendment, then the court will laugh at you.
So it doesn't mean anything.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
Walt Williams filling in for Rush, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
Before we go back to the phones, there's the Washington Post uh piece.
Uh and it says that uh the staffers at Newsweek, Newsweek is taking a bath, is not uh doing very well.
Uh they are a bit disturbed that Newsweek has was transformed into a left-leaning magazine.
And they're taking losses, forty-four million since uh two thousand seven.
And so the question is, where were they?
Where was the staff when the newsweek was turning to the left?
And there's another interesting story about uh White House correspondent uh Helen Thomas.
Uh she told the she told the uh that Jews should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany.
And that was uh accepted as uh anti-Semitic uh stereotype.
And uh and the question is asked is that um if she uh whether she could continue to go to the White House.
I mean, because if uh if she if she said that all blacks should go back to Africa, then there would have been uh a a hailstorm of uh a protest.
But uh I don't know, I don't know whether I can get that angry with uh Ellen Thomas because uh as I said uh that uh one's the test of one's the true test of one's commitment to free speech does not come when he permits people to be free to say those things with which he agrees.
The true test comes when he allows people to be free to say those things that he finds offensive.
So I'm I'm not uh I'm not mad.
I'm not angry with uh Helen Thomas.
So anyway, let's go to the phones and let's go to Jim in Buena Park, California.
Welcome to the show, Jim.
Good morning, Professor Williams, and good afternoon, your time.
Uh brief comment.
I appreciate your highlighting items in the Constitution that should be observed by members of the government and on your points of entitlement.
My belief is that my rights end where the other man's nose begins.
And my question for you is what publications receive your uh your uh uh article and what books have you written.
Well, if you go to my website, uh Walter E. Williams.com, you'll see some of the books in my publications.
The most recent is available at the Hoover Institution as a collection of my columns, and it's called Liberty versus the Tyranny of Socialism.
Uh it's a ver excellently uh done uh book.
And then I've told the people at the Hoover Institution I want all Americans to be able to buy that book, and so they're only charging fifteen dollars plus postage.
It's uh excellent book, it's really worth it.
And my columns carried in about a hundred and sixty newspapers and websites and and some guy, uh Carlos Ball in Florida, he translates it into Spanish, and uh it sometimes is carried in about uh eleven Latin American papers, and I think it also in Spain once in a while.
So there you have it, and you just go to my website, Walter E. Williams.com, and you get a lot of good stuff uh that I put up there for the average American, does not uh get a chance to read.
And particularly in economics, there's economics for the citizen, a brilliant piece written by me uh several years ago.
But thanks a lot, Jim, and let's go to uh Kevin in uh what is that cell Iowa Cell Hello Walter, thank you for taking it.
Okay, you tell me where you're from.
I'm from uh Nebraska, but I'm heading through Iowa right now.
Oh, okay.
Okay, it's a cell call.
Okay, right.
Okay.
Hey, um uh again, thanks for taking my call.
I read your uh one of your books over the weekend, um uh More Liberty Means Less Government.
Uh an excellent, excellent piece, and I've been hearing most of everything you've said today come right out of that book.
It's been great.
Um one of the things that um I wanted to, I hope that you could explain a little more for people, uh, is because the light went off for me.
Um one of the things that um people always argue about is uh let's take smoking for example.
Um well, you know, the cost get passed on to society, and your answer to that is great.
Um it says, well, that's a problem of socialism, not a problem of personal liberty.
That's right.
I think a lot I think a lot of people like me um need to understand that more.
I just would I would hope you would uh could give us a little more on that.
And uh if I if you don't mind one comment from my dad, he always said um that he thought that uh both you and Thomas Sowell ought to be president and vice president, and he didn't care which one was which.
Well, thank you very much.
Uh we're we we're up against the clock, but I'm gonna come back with the answer to your question in uh just a few minutes after we go make some money.
Walter Williams filling in for rush and we're pushing back the frontiers of ignorance.
Now, Kevin called in and he's talking about reading my book, and so he says that sometimes you hear people say, Well, we we we we're gonna have a law requiring that you wear seat belts, because if you're not wearing a seat belt and you have an accident and you turn into a vegetable, you'll be a burden on society.
You'll be a burden on taxpayers.
Well, that's not a problem of liberty.
Because, like if I own Walter Williams, then I have the right to take risks with Walter Williams' body.
I don't have a right to take risks with your body, but I have a right to take risks with my own.
So if I'm not wearing a seat belt and I have an accident, and I become a burden, you know, I become a vegetable and a burden on society, that's not a problem of liberty.
That's a problem of socialism.
That is, because no one should be forced to take care of anybody for any reason.
Nobody should be forced.
That's a problem of socialism.
So here's what the government is telling us.
They're saying to us.
They're saying, well, since we have to take care of you, you make a mistake, your poor judgment.
We have the right to tell you what to do.
Since we have since we're we have this Obamacare, and if you get diabetes, we're gonna have to take care of you.
So we have the right to regulate the amount of sugar that you eat.
We have the right to regulate the amount of salt.
That is, if you give government the right to take care of people, th you know, through taking other people's money, of course, then government has a right to tell you what to do.
I mean, it's kind of like my mother.
You know, when when boys get around 15, 13, 14 start smelling themselves hormones going, they think they can take over the house.
And my mother told me, you know, I was acting, you know, like I want to take over the house.
She said, Look, boy, as long as you're living under my roof and I'm taking care of I and I'm paying the bills, you're gonna do what I say.
Now, that's all right when you're raising children, but what about adults?
That is, should we say that should we have government tell us as long as we're paying for you, we're you're gonna do what we say.
I reject that, and I think most Americans ought to reject it.
Surely our founding fathers would have rejected it.
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