Rush Limbaugh Program - December 30, 2011, Friday, Hour #2

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Dec. 30, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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December 30, 2011, Friday, Hour #2

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	That is that is absolutely right, Thomas.
	I mean uh Johnny Donovan.
	Walter E. Williams setting in for Rush, who will return uh January third, uh, which is Tuesday, and uh Monday is the uh best of Rush, but uh Rush will be back in person behind the EIB golden microphone on January third.
	But right now, ladies uh right now uh we um we have uh Dr. Thomas Sowell's on, and he's going to talk to us about his um uh latest book, uh the Thomas Sowell Reader.
	And for those of you who are unfamiliar, uh Thomas Sowell, he's a um he's a scholar at the uh Hoover Institution in Stanford, uh California, and he's been uh senior fellow there for a number of years, and he's written um uh many, many books, and this is his uh 46 uh book.
	Welcome to the show, Tom.
	How are you?
	Okay, we're doing fine.
	And uh I just want to tell by the way, uh uh Bo Snerdley, uh the fellow you're just talking to.
	He said he said, How does Tom Sowell write so many books?
	He doesn't do anything else.
	I and well, I normally tell me I I normally tell people, well, the guy writes with both hands, and he but uh this is really a masterpiece that you've uh uh uh that you've assembled.
	Uh Tom, the Thomas Sowell reader.
	And and there are a couple pieces I would like to talk to you about in the book.
	There's a couple of articles ladies and gentlemen, it's a bunch of articles.
	Uh I I I forget the number of chapters, but it's like 30 articles or 30 uh 30 or 40 different chapters in here.
	And uh one that we're gonna start off talking about is life at the bottom.
	Oh, yes.
	And uh and and Tom says that uh that poverty uh used to mean hunger, inadequate quote clothing, and uh and protection against and uh inadequate protection against the elements.
	And and that's what poverty was when when Thomas Sowell and I were young.
	It's not poverty today, is it Tom?
	Oh, good grief.
	No.
	I mean uh m most of the people who are below the official poverty line in the United States have color t color television microwave ovens and own either a car or a truck.
	Now we didn't call that anything like poverty when I was growing up.
	Oh, that's right.
	And and and in some cases, uh uh according to a study by Heritage Foundation, uh I think 14, 16 percent of people who are called poor, who fit the de the uh census the uh definition as poor, uh 14 or 15 percent have two or more cars.
	Oh, yes, yes.
	Uh uh when I was doing research, I found that uh uh that the hundred hundreds of uh uh thousands of people li uh with incomes below twenty thousand dollars a year uh live in houses costing three hundred thousand dollars or more.
	Now, as of the time I discovered that I was living in a house costing less than three hundred thousand dollars.
	Now now I think the the one of the wonderful things about uh your your writing is that well, you're saying these some of these things that we observe in United States are not unique to United States, and they're not by no means unique to uh to black Americans.
	And you uh and and this book that you talk about in this particular column is called uh Life at the Bottom by uh what is it, Darman?
	Theodore Dalrymple.
	Dalrymple.
	He's a doctor in a predominantly white, low-income neighborhood in England.
	them.
	Yeah, and and and and uh and and you're saying that uh he's talking about the same kind of things about whites, uh low lower class whites in uh in England that we can say about the lower class blacks and whites in the United States.
	Yeah, and and and and I think it may be easier for some people to understand w what's really involved, because so much of what is done in in the black community that's counterproductive is uh taught is uh explained away as a as a legacy of slavery or just or Jim Crow and all that.
	And you see the exact same things happening in these lower class white uh communities in England where none of those things apply.
	Uh one of the one of the most striking is uh the beating up of cla of uh children in school by their classmates uh when when the when the children are trying to get a decent education.
	Uh in fact, Dalrymple is a doctor has treated treated men of these kids because they need medical attention.
	They've been beaten up that badly.
	Yeah.
	Uh and uh when that happens in the United States, they it's called uh the they're accusing the the student black students who are trying to learn of acting white.
	Well, the whole racial thing uh is gone uh in in these lower class white communities.
	So really this this is not something peculiar to the United States or but it it's what happens when you have one a welfare state that allows people to live a counterproductive lifestyle.
	Uh huh and that welfare state is accompanied by an ideology that accepts apologizes for even glorifies that lifestyle.
	Yeah yeah it glorifies and and promotes that that uh lifestyle um but and and also we saw some of it uh uh in England uh during the in Britain uh during the riots of last summer.
	Oh yes.
	Yeah.
	Yeah I mean it's it's it's uh th I I love people who say this this these riots are result of of uh anger uh uh at poverty and so forth and so on and uh there's never been uh uh uh so much anger as there is today when there's so little poverty.
	That's right.
	And you see the rioter uh the rioters in and sometimes in di uh designer clothing.
	Well yeah I mean you know it's one thing back in the days when poor people were desperate and would steal bread I uh in all these riots that I know about I have never seen anybody break into a bakery and steal bread.
	Stealing television sets and X boxes and all stuff.
	Absolutely now there's a there's another uh Ver interesting article that you have in your book uh uh called the uh older Budweiser.
	And uh and it goes back to uh the you know way way back to the uh the Habsburg uh empire where uh people the Czechs and Germans, people of Czech ancestry and uh people of German ancestry uh speaking different languages uh uh got to uh you know got along very very well up until what?
	Up until you got you got uh uh uh uh uh a rising class of Czech intellectuals who resented the fact that they had to learn German in order to get ahead.
	Now this they blamed on the Germans but that they should blame it on history.
	The fact is that the Western European nations had written languages centuri centuries before most of the Eastern European nations.
	Uh mainly because the Germans conquered Western Europe and brought uh I'm sorry the Romans conquered East uh Western Europe uh and brought Roman letters until it was centuries later before they began to have letters for the uh uh languages of eastern Europe.
	Well what that meant was they w that if you wanted to learn you know science or any any serious subject uh you had a better shot at it if you learned uh some Western European language in this case German uh rather than uh the be confined to the local language.
	Yeah right yeah uh and and and uh and the and the Czech uh intellectuals uh they started telling the the people the the Czechs in um in Budweiser and and Budweise uh saying you know you know y yeah had to be cultural identity and uh oh that that that is really locking people in a blind alley.
	I mean this is we we call it multiculturalism today.
	Uh but what I mean to me multiculturalism is like the caste system.
	It means it confines you to where you happen to have been born regardless of how many opportunities there are in the world for you to advance by learning something else beyond where where you were born.
	Yeah, right.
	And we see that in the United States as well.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And it's led by the intelligentsia in our country on college campuses.
	They even have vice presidents for diversity.
	Oh, gosh.
	Oh, yes.
	I mean, spending millions of dollars all over our country at universities, driving up the costs of the university by having all these offices nonstop.
	nonsense offices that uh that did not exist yesteryear.
	That's true but but but uh th the the the vast amount of money that they waste is really the least of it what they really waste that's more valuable uh is the time of the students who you know after all are young and inexperienced they may think it's wonderful to sit around and rap about uh racial issues or or uh th glass feelings and all that kind of stuff.
	Uh but none of that is going to allow them to have a marketable skill when they leave that y institution.
	And this was the problem this is the problem in a number of countries, not just in the Habsburg Empire, but around the world and into the present time.
	That wherever you have a newly arising intellect intelligentsia from some group that is poorer, uh, they typically uh specialize in the softer subjects.
	They do not learn science, math, medicine, all that kind of stuff.
	They learn all kinds of stuff that's much easier.
	And then when they get out into the world and discover there's absolutely no demand for that kind of stuff, then they become identity uh merchants.
	Yeah.
	And and and and you know I and I think that's one of the uh I think it's one of the things that uh you're to be uh uh complimented on in the s in the sense that uh you bring an international perspective to uh many of these problems that we face as a as a nation that is uh well affirmative action is not only a disaster in the United States but is the it's a disaster in India.
	It's been a disaster everywhere it's been tried in in Sri Lanka and all these other places and I think that I think that we gain something if we recognize that well gee uh these problems these social problems or economic problems are not unique to any particular culture.
	Absolutely uh and m and mo and most of the countries where they've pushed preferential policy for one group, they argue as if what something peculiar to that particular country is the reason.
	For example in New Zealand they say you know there's the Treaty of Waitangi in eighteen forty three you know and then that's why the Maoris deserve preferential treatment.
	And here it's uh another rationale in India it's another but whatever the rationale the patterns are just painfully similar.
	That's right.
	And and and a s a scientist would not go uh from um uh New York to London and saying well the law of gravity operates differently in London because of your because of the Roman conquest.
	Yes.
	Hey tough ironically the Roman conquest is what put England on the map.
	That's right they they they took them out of the caves.
	Oh that's right and trade show Tracy obviously a British patriot nevertheless said we owe London to Rome.
	The British didn't build London.
	The Romans built London Hey Tom we're gonna take a short break but after this we're gonna take a few calls.
	We'll be back with your calls after this we're back and it's Walter Williams uh sitting in for uh Rush Limbaugh and right now we have uh Dr. Thomas Sowell he's uh senior fellow at the uh Hoover Institution at Sanford University and we're talking about his latest uh collection it's called the uh Thomas Sowell uh reader and it's available at uh at bookstores everywhere and
	before we get to the phone calls I want to talk about another article among um among many many other wonderful articles in this book and it's called uh Ivan and Boris and Us.
	Now it turns out that that uh this little story by Ivan and and uh and Boris is a it's about two Russian uh peasants and Ivan finds a lamp, a magic lamp and rubs it and the genie grants him one ish, one wish and turns out that uh it turns out that Boris has a goat and Ivan doesn't and Ivan wishes for bo uh Boris's boat um I'm sorry Ivan wishes for
	Boris's goat to die.
	And so so uh Tom was saying that uh it's suggesting that that vision uh maybe reflects many Americans.
	Uh can you explain that a little bit oh yes I mean there are people out there who they they want millionaires to be taxed uh higher in a confiscatory taxation.
	Uh uh and if you think think it through that that's not gonna do them the slightest good any more than it would have done Ivan any good to have Boris's goat die.
	But this envy and resentment that's being constantly pushed uh by uh by the Obama administration uh wins them votes even if it doesn't collect any tax revenue.
	Most people are unaware that uh very high tax rates often bring in even less revenue than the lower tax rate for the simple reason that people have so many who are who really are millionaires and billionaires have so many options of where to put their money.
	And uh back in the nineteen twenties, they put it in tax exempt bonds.
	And so uh the vast majority of of income of rich people in the early twenties was never taxed because they were in tax exempt securities.
	That's right.
	And and and and rich people did not become rich by being stupid.
	That's right.
	They're not gonna uh stand still like a sheep to be sheared.
	Uh and currently, f for example, within the reason in recent years, instead of foreigners sending more money to be invested in the United States, as is usually happened uh in our history, Americans are sending money more money overseas to be invested to get away from the high taxes.
	Now all you have to do is jack up the taxes some more, and more of it will go overseas.
	And all the jobs that could have been created by those by that money will not be created here.
	They'll be created, you know, in Europe or Asia somewhere.
	Mm-hmm.
	Now now now tell us something.
	Um I know the answer, but I want you to uh uh to explain it to to uh the uh the Rush audience that it turns out that according to Forbes, uh top the top ten uh celebrities, excluding uh athletes, they earn an average salary of a little bit more than a hundred million dollars a year in twenty ten.
	The average that w the top ten CEOs uh had an average s salary of forty-three million dollars a year.
	Now, there's a lot of uh hate and uh and criticism of CEOs making uh millions of dollars, but very little or no criticism of celebrities making much more than uh than than uh CEOs.
	Oh heavens.
	Uh when when I didn't research for a previous book, I I discovered that the uh average uh pay uh of a CEO of a company of a company big enough to be in the standard and fours index was one thirtieth of what Oprah Wintry makes.
	Uh-huh.
	Now I I I I don't see these big campaigns against Oprah Wendry, no nor should there be.
	But but but the point is uh it shows the utter hypocrisy of what's being said.
	If it's the money that's being uh earned by differ by different people, then the entertainers and the sports stars ought to be criticized more than the CEOs.
	Now, actually none of them should be criticized, uh, because the people are voluntarily paying them for what for whatever they're whatever service they're providing.
	Mm-hmm.
	And that's absolutely right.
	And then also the politicians, they don't want to take over the jobs of the s of the uh celebrities.
	Oh, they can't.
	I mean, and they well, what what what put members of Congress could could could could run Oprah Wintry show?
	Or or or do the things that uh LeBron James does for 43 million dollars a year on the basketball court.
	Uh uh absolutely.
	But they but they can take over uh and interfere with companies.
	They have done they have pr they have proven that to a certainty.
	Uh Sylandra is only the latest example.
	Let's uh let's take a a quick call from um from Allen in Fort Worth, uh, Texas.
	You're on with Tom Sowell, and you've got to be quick because we're up against the clock.
	Dr. Williams, Dr. Sowell, it is my high honor to s to visit with you today.
	You're you're leading uh conservative intellectuals, but you're you have a unique perspective in in that you're both black.
	And when you look at the state of the black family and when the criticisms of what's happened to blacks in general in in America are come come from people like myself who are white, we're labeled as racists, going as far back as Daniel Moynihan in the sixties.
	And what is your perspective on that?
	And the second part of the question is uh forgive my ill manners, but you're both elevated in age.
	Where are the next black conservative intellectuals coming from and who are they?
	No one predicted where we were coming coming from, and therefore uh the w we we can't predict where we're where our our successes are coming from.
	So so I guess one of his questions, well, how can uh uh n how come uh non blacks cannot talk to uh or cr be as critical as blacks as we are.
	Oh, because so many people intimidate them.
	I get l uh letters from people saying, you know, uh will people be offended if I say this.
	I tell them there are people who are in the business of being offended.
	So if you say anything that's truthful that they don't like, the immediately they'll play the race clause, just as the attorney general holder is doing right now.
	Absolutely right.
	And let me ask you this, Tom.
	Ca can you hang on for an another few minutes past the break?
	Absolutely.
	Um but uh I I have one solution, uh Tom, uh about uh helping people feel less guilty.
	And and I have a certificate of amnesty and pardon at my website, Walter Williams.com.
	You just click on it and it's a certificate of amnesty and pardon for all the grievances of uh done by Europeans to our people, and uh and so I g I give them forgivence so they feel stop they stop feeling guilty and stop acting like fools.
	A good idea.
	But uh ladies and gentlemen, I'm on with uh Dr. Thomas Sowell.
	He's going to stay with us for a few minutes, a few more minutes past the break, and we're talking about different articles in his book, The Thomas Soul Reader.
	We'll be back.
	music
	We're back, uh Walter Williams sitting in for uh for Russian, who will be back on on Tuesday, but right now we're on with uh Dr. Thomas Sowell and we're talking about his new book, uh the Thomas Sowell Reader, and it's available at your bookstores uh everywhere.
	Uh Tom, uh one more topic at that you and I we've talked about for a very long time, and that has to be the uh minimum wage, and you have uh a discussion uh in your book about the minimum wage.
	Now uh uh w how ca how do you find, you know, for example, you can find that the labor unions they want a minimum wage and they spend millions and millions of dollars uh lobbying for increasing minimum wage because you know th it they reduces some of their competition in the labor market.
	But there are many people out there who are priests who are good people and they also support the minimum wage.
	How can you possibly explain the people with polar opposite interests coming up with uh the same policy?
	Well, I I think a great deal of the blame belongs on the economics profession because the m you know outside of economics, mo most people, even most faculty members at leading universities have no conception ab of the minimum wage.
	They simply think uh, you know, it'll raise the pay of people who uh who are at the bottom and that's a good thing.
	Well, what it really does, as you pointed out, probably more so than a whole lot of other people, uh is that it prices low skilled un un un uh ex inexperienced people uh out of out of a job.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I remember when I was a teenager had my first job.
	I I thought my boss was very harsh.
	In retrospect, I don't know how the man put up with my incompetence.
	You know, I mean I I I certainly wouldn't put up with anybody who is that incompetent.
	Uh but he he was paying me some very low rate.
	If if he had had to hire me at the rate for an experienced adult worker, there's no way in the world he would have wasted his money like that.
	That's absolutely right.
	And and and the uh and also uh the same thing was with me.
	Uh I I've worked since I was twelve years old at all kinds of jobs, you know, catting on golf courses, uh delivering mail during the Christmas holiday, uh and many, many jobs.
	And uh if it if it had been for if there were a high minimum wage, I might not have had those jobs and the early work experiences that kids have, it teaches them things that go well beyond a little bit of money that they can earn, things like, well, you come to work Thursday even though you got paid Wednesday.
	You can't spit in the foreman's face and still keep your job.
	And and many young people growing up in uh in poor households and going to rotten schools, uh th they don't have the opportunity to to learn things to while they're young and make mistakes while they're young that will make them a more valuable employee in the future.
	Oh, absolutely.
	I I think the loss of the job, the big to me the biggest uh loss when you price tea teenagers out of a job is not the little bit of money they could have made.
	It's the it's the experience on the job.
	Doing things that we take for granted, you know, when we're middle aged, not realizing how how how many of us how long it took before many of us finally got it when we were teenagers.
	Yeah.
	You know, uh my gosh, I mean I I I probably cost the the poor man I work for uh money.
	Uh well, I know I cost him money because I I would uh cause the the the uh beer to explode and cool.
	So so he he was he was really giving you charity.
	Again, I I was very indignant at the time when he chewed me out.
	I said, you know, anybody can make a mistake.
	Actually, I made the that same mistake more than once.
	And and you know, uh and also what's uh what people don't realize is aside from destroying job opportunities, uh the minimum wage law is one of the has been and continues to be one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of races everywhere around the world.
	Oh, absolutely.
	And again, uh you uh you would know this from uh having been in South Africa during the apartheid era, that the uh white labor unions wanted uh minimum wage laws and equal pay for equal work, not because they wanted to help blacks, but because they wanted to price blacks out of a job and keep the jobs for themselves.
	That is absolutely right.
	And you see, uh in I think in 1975 at um a uh a white uh laborer on a construction project, he was getting a dollar ninety-one cents an hour, and a black laborer would get the same thing for would do the same job for thirty-nine cents an hour.
	So there's a lot of incentive for contractors to disobey the job reservation laws and hire blacks because they just you know uh it was a lower cost.
	Well that that of course was the thing behind behind uh as you well know behind the Davis Bacon Act in 1931, that black construction workers from the South were coming up north uh and the construction companies were underbidding the local uh unionized labor to to get contracts because that they they had non union labor from the South.
	Uh and of course the law then priced blacks out of a job.
	That's right.
	Yeah, right.
	And and uh matter of fact, uh if you look at the congressional testimony during the uh during that time, uh Congressman actually said that.
	They uh Congressman Allgood from uh I believe it's Alabama or Georgia, he said, see that contract over there, he uses cheap colored labor and puts them in cabins and is labor of that sort that's in white with white that's in competition with white America today.
	Now, of course, the rhetoric behind today's support of the Davis Bacon Act has changed.
	But the effects are the same.
	That is the Davis Bacon Act tends to discriminate against non-union labor, and most blacks in construction are in the non-union sector.
	One of the things that I think n most people have no inkling of, and the media never tells them, is that during the period of the late nineteen forties, when the when when in see the minimum wage the national minimum wage law was passed in nineteen thirty-eight.
	In the nineteen forties you had runaway inflation, so that by the late forties, even an unskilled worker was making a higher uh pay than the minimum wage law required.
	So in other words, the minimum wage law had for all practical purposes been repealed by inflation.
	And at that time, uh unemployment rates for for black teenagers were a fraction of what they were at any time since then.
	Because in nineteen fifty they started increasing the minimum wage to catch up with inflation and spread the coverage.
	And that's when you got these double digit unemployment rates for black teenagers, even during the height of prosperity.
	Oh, that's right.
	And and today the I think black teenager unemployment is is fifty-five percent.
	And back in nineteen forty-eight, black teenage unemployment was less than white teenage unemployment, uh namely it was I think nine point two compared to ten point one.
	Yeah, yeah.
	But I mean it we we haven't seen those kinds of low unemployment rates for teenagers, you know, in the past half century.
	That's right.
	And and and and it's and it's bec it's because of labor market restrictions uh and in addition to the minimum wage laws, things like uh la various labor laws that is uh laws.
	Yeah, you know, to uh keep kids safe.
	That is uh my cousin and I, when we were thirteen, fourteen years old, when there's a snowstorm, we would shove off train platforms for for the Reading Railroad Company.
	Now, well the unions don't want to see a kid getting thirty dollars for a job that they can get a hundred dollars, and so they're able to use laws and various regulations to deny that opportunity.
	The other thing is that uh if you if you even talk about reducing the tile child labor laws, people are horrified, and we talk about kids going into coal mines and so on.
	Well, what the child labor law at one time that was a real issue.
	Today we have uh big uh strapping black uh and white for that matter, teenagers who are not allowed to work in air-conditioned offices uh because they're too young.
	Well, I d I don't think anything is gonna happen in an air-conditioned office is gonna do uh do them any harm and a lot that'll do them some good.
	That's right.
	Now I let let me uh uh kind of wind up by saying that uh I think that the major the the major mess uh message that uh you've been trying to put across uh through a lot of your uh academic um uh uh writings is that um reality is not optional.
	Yes, that's right.
	And that uh that but we try to pretend that reality is optional, that you can take it or leave it, but that's not the case.
	No, uh uh uh uh uh absolutely and the we th people seem to think that prices are just arbitrary things that happen and the the prices are conveying a reality.
	Now you can control the prices, but that doesn't mean you're controlling the reality.
	I mean, you y you can refuse to pay doctors what what they would normally get on, say Medicare.
	But of course all all that's gonna do is cause more doctors to not not treat people uh who are on Medicare.
	That's right.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Hey, well, look, Tom, uh uh good luck on your book, and I thank you very much for coming on uh talking to uh talking to all of us and uh kind of spreading the word out and trying to get people to think.
	Well, thank you for having me.
	Take care of that.
	Thank you.
	That was Dr. Thomas Sowell, and we'll be back with your calls after this.
	We're back.
	And uh ladies and gentlemen, that was uh my very distinguished uh colleague uh Dr. Thomas Sowell talking about his uh new book, the uh Thomas Sowell uh reader, which is really a collection of a lot of the things that he's done in the past, and includes a l uh some of his current uh material and it's it's very instructive and it's a kind of fun book to read because it's uh most of the articles are just uh two or three or four uh pages, but they're packed with a lot of wisdom.
	Okay, I promise to go to the phones uh and let's go to uh Isabel.
	Welcome to the show.
	Thanks for holding, too.
	Hi, Walter.
	It's uh it's a great honor and pleasure talking to you.
	Um my questi my what I'd like for you to elaborate is um I used to work at a state university here in Illinois, and we had a state retirement system where all our social security money, and I know you were talking about this earlier in the program, and that's what um brought this to mind.
	Um all my in social security and retirement money went into this state this university plan, which is sort of what I considered a a privatized plan.
	Um we could invest uh the amount however amount of money we wanted to put into a retirement into the companies that they had available, whether it was Vanguard, Fidelity, et cetera.
	And despite our the economic um issues that have occurred in our country since nine eleven, um I haven't had a problem with my money.
	As a matter of fact, it's done fantastic.
	Um I have it in Fidelity and I talked to my advisors and how to best invest it and have the money m um do as best as it can um according to the circumstances.
	Now the only catch is as it's retirement, I cannot take it out without it being um taxed.
	And I think Bush, in his err first term, um he d even mentioned on privatizing a very small portion of the social security, I think it was maybe a two to four percent, but I'm not I I won't um I don't remember exactly what I'm saying.
	But y your tax on your money going into uh 401ks and IRAs because you were forgiven taxes on it wh when it first went in.
	That is, you did not pay taxes on the earnings that went towards the uh four or one or the IRAs.
	Well, I'm now and so now you have to pay taxes and you must withdraw it when you're seventy and a half years.
	Right, exactly.
	But in the meantime, the government doesn't have access to the money.
	I I've been the one that has been um with my financial planner um diversifying it accordingly.
	And I was kind of curious as to why um a lot of Americans uh prefer because I think it when Bush had mentioned it of privatizing this very small amount, um I think the Democrats and a number of Republicans they kind of did not like this and people started panicking of what Bush was gonna do, and I was kind of curious as to why would people not want to have at least a portion of that privatized where they manage the money on their own, and what would be the cons.
	Well, a it's at at some point in our history in the future history, and and it's not that far away, uh people are going to want to have it privatized because uh young people will be paying in the social security.
	That is somebody who is thirty years and under today or forty years and under, they will pay their entire life into Social Security, increasing amounts into Social Security, and when they retire they will not they will not see one thin dime.
	Exactly the system is going to collapse.
	And to give you an idea, I think conservative estimates are that for Social Security to pay the same benefits that are paid today to live up to its promises, the Social Security tax alone will have to be somewhere around 20 percent.
	The unfunded liability, this these things are destroying our country.
	The unfunded liability of Social Security, Medicare, and prescription drugs is a hundred and six trillion dollars.
	In other words, what that means is that uh Congress has made a hundred and six trillion dollars promises to the future generations of our country, and to create reserves against that promise, Congress would have to put in six trillion dollars in the bank today, earning a br at least a four percent rate of interest to be able to pay out those obligations.
	And you know Congress is not about to put six trillion dollars in the bank today.
	I don't think so either.
	That far exceeds the budget.
	So we're gonna face a massive problem in the future.
	But here's the here's the here's the kicker, though.
	The beneficiaries of Social Security, those people are sixty-five years old and over, they'll be dead by the time the system collapse in 2030 or 2040.
	The Congressman who is who they're voting for, they'll he'll be dead.
	That is, if any congressman, any congressman talking about doing the kind of things that's good for the future of our country, he'll be run out of town on a rail by the American people, just like Paul Ryan got into a whole lot of flack when he's making some sensible things to do that we should do about uh entitlements.
	And so a politician, uh he's it's political suicide for a politician to do what's good for our country in 2030.
	A politician has to look to tomorrow, to next year when he's up for re-election, that's his time horizon.
	But he doesn't care anything about 2030 or 2040.
	We'll be back with your calls after this.
	We'll be back with your calls.
	Walter Williams setting in for Rush, and by the way, he'll be back on January 3rd.
	By the way, when I was on with uh Tom Sowell and we were talking about poverty in America, there's one thing that I failed to mention, and that is we hear a lot of stuff about the declining uh middle class.
	Well, it's turned out that and and it's uh reference at the uh a column on my website is called Poverty in America, and uh I wrote it in 19, I'm sorry, in November 16th uh this year.
	Anyway, it shows that the median income and consumption rose by fifty percent in real terms between nineteen eighty and two thousand nine.
	And it turns out that that median income and living standards of Americans have increased over the last three decades.
	This business that uh mostly uh uh put out by the left and by the uh leftist media says that there's a disappearing disappearing American middle class.
	That is just plain nonsense.
	And then there's another thing having to do with income mobility.
	That is uh when you look at a group of poor people, let's say in uh let's say 1996, and then you look at the same group of people, the same individuals, it turns out that somewhere between 50 and 75 percent of them moved to some other income class.
	And in some cases, people have moved from the bottom income class to the top.
	There's a lot of income mobility in our country.
	And and that's one of the great things about our nation.
	That is just because you know where somebody ended up in life, you can't be sure about where he started.
	That is, there's so much income uh mobility in our country.
	That is the multi-billionaires today, they're not the Rockefellers, the Goulds, the Carnegie's.
	It's all new money like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
	And we want to preserve this kind of income mobility.
	We don't want to take it away, but it will go away if you go for today's propaganda that there's a disappearing middle class and we're all becoming worse off.

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