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March 19, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:45
March 19, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hi, how are you?
Greetings, my friends.
You are listening to the most listened-to radio talk show in the country.
Show prep for the rest of the media.
That's not meant as an insult.
They don't do that.
Here on this program, they're coming to you from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And on that, we never waiver.
And that is not an insult.
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Right here it is.
Right here it is.
Whither the assault weapons ban, Senator Die Fi, said that a controversial assault weapons ban will not be part of a Democrat gun bill that was expected to reach the Senate floor next month after a meeting with Dingy Harry.
A frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill that she sponsored would not be part of a Democrat gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor.
Instead, it can be offered as an amendment, but its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.
Now, once again, if we believed the drive-by media's poll, we would believe that everyone in the country was demanding an assault weapons ban because that's what the drive-bys have been trying to make everybody believe.
And everybody, particularly after Sandy Hook, everybody was demanding an assault weapons ban.
So if that's the case, why has the Senate dropped it?
The reason is there's no popular support for it.
The drive-bys have lied to us with their polls.
And poor Difi, poor die-fi.
She said, I tried my best, but my best, I guess, just wasn't good enough.
So see, it's still at the end.
It's all about her.
Lord, she tried.
Oh, God, she tried so hard.
She did her best.
It wasn't good enough.
What do you mean she's not a sixth grader?
Oh, that's right.
That's right.
That's what she said at Ted Cruz, that she didn't need to be lectured on the Constitution.
She's not a sixth grader.
This, I'm going to tell you something.
The fact that this assault weapons ban doesn't make it, this is a, I think it represents a pretty quick victory for our side, one which nobody would have thought possible a few short weeks ago.
Harry Reid must want to get re-elected is what this means.
It has to mean that.
It has to mean that Dingy Harry wants to get re-elected.
I mean, if the polls could be wrong about this, what else could they be wrong about?
Amnesty, same-sex marriage?
I wonder.
Well, the polls on this had this a slam dunk.
Everybody, don't you know, wanted an assault weapons ban.
But it doesn't even get out of the committee, practically, in a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Okay, let's go to the audio soundbites.
This is always fun to try.
It's one of the hardest things to explain to people who have a difficult time understanding economics.
And, you know, economics is one of these things that it's so commonsensical simple that it's complicated.
Really, even to me, economics is one of the most complicated, simple things.
And by that I mean, once a simple logical explanation is given to answer a question about economics, everybody who hears the answer says, oh, that guess is so simple.
Why wasn't I able to think of that?
It's curious.
It's always been curious.
Now, the minimum wage.
I've been doing this program.
We're in our 25th year.
And the minimum wage, like clockwork, is going to come up every other year.
And it's going to come up the same way it always comes up.
Nobody can live on a minimum wage.
It's unfair.
It's un-American.
Not if minimum wage, family of four couldn't anymore live.
We need to raise the minimum wage.
And people go, yeah, yeah, it's really not.
People can't live on $10 an hour.
Then you explain to people why the minimum wage actually causes unemployment and you lose them.
I watched, before the program today, I watched one of the most easily understood, brilliant economists of our time, Milton Friedman, explain this to Charlie Rose.
And it's from many, many moons ago.
Back when Charlie parted his hair on the side and there was a lot of it.
I mean, his hair was so odd-looking, I didn't recognize that it was Charlie until I took a second and third look at it.
And I still wasn't sure until he opened his mouth and started responding to Dr. Friedman.
And the way it always gets started is minimum wage is too low.
A family of four couldn't possibly live on this.
What's so unfair?
We've got to raise the minimum wage.
And then somebody would come along and say, no, no, the minimum wage is the best way to guarantee that low skilled or unskilled labor never gets hired.
And that's where you lose people.
And I think one of the reasons people have a tough time understanding it is they don't really fully understand what a job is.
And they don't really fully appreciate what the purpose of a business is, large or small business.
Even as we speak today, I would wager you'd be shocked if you went out and picked an average focus group of low-information voters and asked them, what is the purpose of a corporation?
You would be shocked at the answers that you would get.
Well, it's to provide health care for people in the community.
Well, a corporation is to provide jobs.
Or you would get, well, corporations aren't people.
Corporations are evil and they simply just make products that kill people and they overcharge.
You get everything under the sun but the right answer.
And then what's the purpose of a job?
Well, so that the community has people at work and can get health care.
No, that's not why there are jobs.
So then the minimum wage gets thrown into this.
And it's always an interesting exercise for me.
Haven't done it lately because everybody in this audience is now up to speed on it.
But in the early days of this program, I would try a trick.
Minimum wage is the topic.
And let's say at the time it's $7.50 an hour.
Somebody calls it ought to be $10.
And I'd say, yeah, you're right.
Why not $15?
Yeah, okay, make it $15.
I said, well, why stop there?
Why shouldn't a minimum wage be $20 an hour?
And yeah, okay, right.
And I said, you know, let's quit beating around the bush.
Let's make the minimum wage $50 an hour.
At some point, everybody would stop.
No, no, no, that's high enough.
And at that point, you had them.
Whatever the dollar amount they thought was too high is when you say, well, why?
Well, I mean, who are we talking about here?
Minimum wage is for people that really don't know it anyway.
There's no relationship that much.
Well, why?
That's about the only way I have found to properly get people that don't understand it to understand why the minimum wage is a bad thing.
If you try to say that a wage that is arbitrarily chosen, that has no relationship to skill, ability, work output, is no good, you lose people because they think a job is charity.
They think what somebody earns is almost a charity thing, that people are owed money just because they're alive.
And the purpose of a business is to be nice to the people it hires and make sure that they can live.
And that's not what the purpose of a job is or the purpose of a business.
But that sounds too cold and unfeeling for your average low information.
Now, it's gotten to the point now where even accredited institution of higher learning academics don't get the minimum wage.
Or newly elected senators, such as Elizabeth Warren, who said, you didn't build that.
You didn't make that happen.
All of us made that happen for you.
Last Thursday, during a Senate help committee hearing entitled Keeping Up with a Changing Economy, Indexing the Minimum Wage, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked the University of Massachusetts economics professor, Dr. Arendraheet Dubay.
It's his name.
Duby.
She asked Professor Duby this question.
If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is, as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same.
And if that were the case, the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour.
So my question, Mr. Dubay, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, is what happened to the other $14.75.
So you see what's being set up.
The minimum wage, based on what it was when we started it, and then you factor economic growth, inflation, all the differing factors that have changed.
If the minimum wage today were to stay equal to $7.25 or whatever it was when it started, it'd be $22 an hour now.
Why isn't it?
Why are people getting screwed, Dr. Dubay?
Why are these evil corporations hoarding that money and not giving it to the workers?
Now, this Dr. Dubay himself is entirely clueless.
And this is one reason why it is a risk for you to send your kids to a college today.
Because they're going to come out also clueless.
And they're going to end up being politically well, not educated, but propagandized, indoctrinated.
Here is Dr. Dube's response to the question, what happened to the other $14.75?
That's correct.
Since early 70s, what we have seen is a divergence in the prosperities of different sections of our population.
So, for instance, had the minimum wage kept pace with productivity since 1960, you're correct.
It would have stood around $22 an hour today.
Now, the answer to your question, who got the other $14, we can answer with the following comparison.
Had the minimum wage grown at the same pace of incomes going to the top 1% of the taxpayers, the minimum wage would have stood at $33 an hour before the recession in 2007.
Oh my God, it's even worse, the conspiracy.
Holy, the rich people took the $14.75 and even more.
They just took it.
It should be $33 an hour.
But you see, folks, there's no it's a lost cause to try to explain this to people.
Because if you are rooted in this emotionally and all you think about is the concept of fairness and corporations or businesses are evil and try to get away with hurting people, you're never going to understand.
Never.
No matter you, nobody better than I, L. Rushboard, making it complex understandable.
Well, can you go to their bank accounts and get it?
Yeah, that'd be fair.
That'd be fair.
Little Cypress actually go to their bank accounts and get it from them.
They didn't earn it anyway, the top 1%.
Everybody knows this is exactly how, in fact, the rich got rich.
This is how they stole the money that was due to the poor.
This is how it happened.
Minimum wage people ought to be getting $33 an hour today.
They're only getting 7.
The 1% grabbed it, and that's how they got rich.
That's the conclusion here.
It is woefully wrong.
Embarrassingly, woefully wrong.
But I can start out and tell you why.
And if you are invested in all this emotionally, you don't stand a prayer of understanding it.
I'm sorry.
And it may not even be worth my time to try.
And welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.
Okay, now the first thing I got to tell you is that all of these numbers that Elizabeth Warren and Dr. Dube used were made up.
There is no equivalent today of $22 an hour minimum wage.
I went to the U.S. government's own inflation calculator website, and I went back to 1968 and I plugged in $1.60.
In 1968, I was making a buck and a quarter.
It was not minimum wage.
This is what the job offered.
Somebody who had never done it before.
That's what it was worth to the people that hired me.
And I'm going to tell you this.
If the minimum wage had been five bucks, I would not have gotten hired.
They would have hired somebody that knew what they were doing.
They were not going to pay somebody $5 an hour who had no idea.
It was not an apprenticeship.
They had a real job that needed to be done.
And it was, and this is the fallacy of the minimum wage is it eliminates jobs.
It keeps inexperienced people out of the workforce.
The higher it goes, the more unemployment there is.
You've got to totally wipe out this notion of fairness.
That's not what a job is.
It isn't charity.
The price of a job is not related to what it costs to live.
The price of a job is what the business owner values that work to be.
And of course, he wants to pay as little for it as he can and still get the job done.
When I worked at the Kansas City Royals, and this is not to criticize them, 19, let's see, 79, I'm 28 years old, $12,000 a year.
That, folks, was nothing.
And you know what?
There were people who would have done it for less than that.
Baseball teams, sports teams have groupies lined up all down the block wanting to work there.
There was no reason to pay what I was doing any more than that.
And that didn't matter fairness or anything.
That's what the job was.
And if I wanted it, that's what it paid.
And the minimum wage, if there had been a minimum wage of $20,000 a year for that job, I wouldn't have gotten it.
I'd never done the job before.
Or they would have eliminated the job, more than likely.
But when you arbitrarily attach a price to a job, any job, the minimum wage, be it hamburger flipper or working at a department or whatever, when there's no relationship to the job itself, just it's a job, then there's no market force involved, and it's totally artificial.
And I'm going to tell you the real reason there's a minimum wage and the real reason people want it high.
It's the labor unions.
The higher the minimum wage, the more they can claim they are owed.
If the minimum wage, the highest it can be, is what you pay somebody that doesn't know diddly squat about what they're doing.
And make no mistake, minimum wage is entry-level work.
If you're going to pay somebody that has no experience and no know-how and doesn't know beans about what they're doing, $10 an hour, then I, the union bricklayer, ought to make $50.
And that's what they do.
It keeps truly novice, unqualified people out of the workforce, and that's not good because they don't learn skills.
You want people working.
The minimum wage was never designed for people to be able to feed a family four on it.
The minimum wage is a flawed concept from the get-go anyway.
But people do not, they can't get their arms around the notion of how it eliminates jobs.
Now, in 1968, I don't know what the average, I don't even know if there was a minimum wage in 1960.
I don't know when it started, but I just chose an arbitrary figure of $1.60 an hour as a minimum wage, 1968, when I was 17.
$1.60 in 1968 is worth $10.67 today.
So when Elizabeth Warren sits there with Dr. Dube and tells you that the minimum wage ought to be $22 an hour based on what it was when it started, that's entirely made up.
And then when he comes back and says, well, yeah, and if you relate it to the wage gains of the top 1%, then, Senator, it ought to be 33.
They're just making these numbers up.
So $1.60 in 1968 is equivalent to $10.67 today.
Not 22 and not 33.
Anyway, that's the best I can do.
And if you're still lost, you are forever going to be lost on this.
And we'll take a brief time out and be back.
Don't go away.
They're just getting around now to Fox reporting the assault weapons man, a big setback.
I ran into a story last night that warmed my heart.
It surprised me.
It shocked me, but it warmed my heart.
It's about Mick Jagger.
It's about Mick Jagger and his kids and his ex-wife.
His ex-wife, no, no, not Bianca.
Well, that's an ex-wife, but it's not that one.
Jerry Hall.
Mick has a couple of kids with Jerry Hall.
And Jerry Hall is demanding that Mick buy her kids houses.
There are three of them.
Jerry says, Mick, you've got all kinds of money here.
I want my daughters to live well.
You should buy them houses.
And Mick is in the hell with that.
They should earn their own way.
Mick Jagger has a little rule for his kids when it comes to money.
Earn it yourself.
Mick Jagger is very much against parental housing subsidies.
Now, it is said that he's worth about 200 pounds.
And he's also reputed to be very stingy.
He is.
That is his reputation.
And he is furious because his ex-wife, Jerry Hall, is out telling everybody what a rotten guy he is.
And she is demanding that he give up half-ownership in a house which has great views, a great location to London.
And she also wants him to give his children by her houses before he dies.
Mick Jagger is 70.
And she's trying, you believe that.
The lead singer to Rolling Stones is 70.
Anyway, he's telling him to take a hike.
His daughter by Bianca, Jade, totally whatever she has on her own.
I mean, he might have helped her out reputation-wise, but she started her own business and she did it herself.
He does not believe in taking care of his kids.
They're not going to learn how to provide for themselves.
There's a fascinating little story.
And it says in the story that Jerry Hall does not understand why Mick won't dip into his wealth to help her kids.
They're his kids, too, by the way.
But the story is referring to it as her kids.
And he just won't.
Well, he's not giving it to the government yet, but it's more that it's a philosophy.
I just...
I'm just pleasantly surprised.
Mick Jagger just thinks it'd be the worst thing in the world for his kids to not have to go out and earn their own way.
And as a person of wealth, he made it a point that his kids were going to have to learn to earn their own way, not feed off of him.
I shouldn't ever, I shouldn't admit that.
I'm not going to admit this.
You can't draw it out of me.
I'm sorry for bringing this up.
I'm not going to talk about it.
I was going to tell you what my attitude on this would be if I had kids.
And it's a good thing I don't.
I would resent every penny I had to spend on them.
I'm sorry.
I just know myself.
I know I would.
But 18 on, I just remember the story my friend told me.
His dad came to him two days before his 18th birthday and said, What are you going to do?
What do you mean?
Well, you're 18.
You can't live here anymore.
Kicked out of the house at 18.
You're an adult.
I'm not feeding you anymore.
It's up to you.
No, I'm not saying that.
That's an extreme example of somebody who, you know, tough parenting.
But what is this?
I've just been handed a note here.
The Cyprus parliament voted against taking people's money.
After a debate on a divisive tax lawmaker, some Cyprus Democrat rally party, that's the name of the party, Democrat Rally, headed by President Nicos Anastasiadis, said that they would abstain from a vote, a move that amounted to a rejection of the bill.
But here there's a backstory to this.
What they did, the Cyprus government went to the people and said, okay, okay, okay.
We won't take everybody's.
We'll just take 10% of the rich.
And the middle class and the poor people of Cyprus said, nope, we're not voting for that.
You're not taking anybody's money.
They tried the Obama-class envy approach, and the people of Cyprus shot the whole thing down.
So this thing has been killed for now.
For now.
The next time they do it, they won't tell anybody in advance they're going to do it.
They're just going to do it.
They will do this.
They're government.
They're out of money.
They're broke.
They will do this.
If I lived there, I would not put my money back in the bank had I taken it out.
I wouldn't.
Now make them come to my house and get it from underneath the bed or wherever I put it.
Okay, Paul in Fargo, North Dakota.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Rush.
Hey.
My God, you have made this my birthday, no, sir.
And I guess I can.
I've been participating with you for about 20 years now.
And one of those things that strikes as far as what a conservative mind is, is just simply simplicity.
Any complication is just a window for like 10 other distractions.
And I think that's where we got to with this whole navel-gazing over why we lost this election with Romney and what is a Republican these days.
I think the lesson that we haven't learned is that this is what happens when you compromise.
Nobody liked the guy.
So, I mean, it was quite simply said that, I mean.
When you say nobody liked the guy, you mean as somebody to vote for?
Yes.
Yeah.
Oh, he was a nice guy, yes.
But he was not.
I see him as he wasn't establishment Republican, and he definitely was no Tea Party Republican.
What he was was, you know, a compromise.
So, of course, I mean, everyone of any stripe had reason to sit home.
I almost feel like any vote that he got was almost a pity vote.
Really?
Almost any vote he got was a pity vote.
They felt sorry for him.
Well, on either way of those extremes, look at what we're up against.
Liberalism is no small creature.
I think it was very much demanded of us to get almost as extreme.
And I think we just totally kissed that away with trying to draw lines between the extremes, the compromise.
Well, in the sense that Romney was a compromise candidate, what do you mean?
He wasn't a conservative.
He wasn't somebody that the Tea Party stood behind.
He wasn't, and I guess I even kind of used that word Tea Party a little, I don't know if I like it because, you know, we're all people.
So, but he wasn't of a conservative mindset, and he definitely wasn't of like, you know, the Rockefeller or McCain mindset either.
So he didn't get this.
Pardon?
No, it's interesting.
The Republican establishment didn't view him this way.
You go back to 2008.
The Republican establishment was firmly behind McCain and are going to do whatever it took to make sure that McCain got the nomination and was guaranteed to lose, even though McCain, prior to the fiscal crisis, quote unquote, was actually leading marginally in the polls.
But I think McCain was destined.
The Republican Party is hell-bent on not nominating a conservative.
Because I think when it comes down to, because the Republican Party doesn't, we've lost senses of what it was that we stand for.
I don't understand what a Republican is these days if all they are is just another version of a liberal.
Well, now you're navel-gazing.
Am I?
I'm just kidding you.
A little part of analysis.
Look, I've got to take a break here.
I just looked at the clock, but I know what you're saying.
There was just it all combines into a losing proposition is the bottom line.
And it's so simple.
You're right.
The simple answer is conservatism.
It does win.
The American people, we talked about this earlier in the program.
If you weren't with us, folks, it's amazing.
There's a story in PJ Media today.
It's actually a poll taken at thehill.com.
And they ran a bunch of policy and solutions to problems by people that were conservative ideas and conservative solutions.
And by 55 to 60% of these polls, people overwhelmingly supported them.
Then they found out, then they were told that their ideas are supported by Republicans, and they ran the other way.
What proposal do 20?
Oh, yeah, they outlined a Democrat senator's proposal, Patty Murray.
They outlined her proposal.
It drew 28%.
The liberal idea got 28%.
The conservative solution, 55 to 58%.
But when people found out that it was Republicans, they ran the other way.
So it's not the ideas is the point.
I got to take a break.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Here's a story I wanted to get to today, but I'm not going to have time.
I'll get to it tomorrow.
But I want to tell you about it.
Story in the UK Daily Mail, but it's about America.
The headline, Rise of the Happy Housewife, how a new wave of feminists are giving up their careers to stay at home because they want to.
The only thing wrong with this is it isn't a new wave.
It's been going on for a while.
I have been happily chronicling this, but we will deal with it tomorrow, nevertheless, because it's going to be a nice jab at the feminazis who are bombing out on this.
And that's worth telling again and again and again.
No, it's not new.
The fact that women have been going to careers, going to work, then having babies, intending to go back to work after the baby's born, and then during a maternity leave, say, you know what?
I'd let her stay home here with little Janie.
And the feminazis are not happy.
Now, UK Daily Mail reporting, and this is a new wave, but it isn't new.
But it is increasing.
I don't have time today to get into it, but we will tomorrow.
Okay, folks, that's it.
Sadly, we are out of busy broadcast moments, but we'll be back tomorrow and do it all over again.
Really do appreciate your being with us, as is the case every day.
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