All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 5, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:08
December 5, 2013, Thursday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Doing what I was born to do, Rush Limbaugh here at the prestigious Limbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Now we never waver from that.
You can count on, that's what you're always going to get when you come here.
It's the largest free education institution known to exist in a free or oppressed worlds.
And there are no graduates and there are no degrees because the learning never stops.
A telephone number, you own a program 800-282-2882, the email address lrushbow at eIB net.com.
I mentioned at the top of the program, there's a whole different metric now for measuring income inequality versus the way it used to be measured.
Such a different culture we are now from when it first began measured in the 1950s.
I'm going to give you details on that in this half hour, this monologue segment, as well as, folks, there's a fascinating story from the Heritage Foundation on how do you really earn money?
What is the way to increase the amount of money you're paid where you work?
And it's not the minimum wage.
And Heritage Foundation has data that they've accompanied her with a chart.
The chart is worthless.
Even if you look at it, I can do much better telling you about it than you could see looking at.
But it's it's I don't want to some people like charts, but I have that coming up.
But I have to remind you, folks, today is the final day.
This is it.
You have until 11.59 p.m. Pacific tonight to shop at 2ifyt.com and to be automatically registered to win one of the four grand prizes in our final massive sweepstakes of the year at 2ifyt.com.
We, Catherine, I really looking forward to calling the four winners that tell you to pack your bags, your grand prize winner, you're heading to sunny South Florida to spend the day with us at the EIB Southern Command.
Now we do all of this at 2ifyT.com in honor of the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.
Phenomenal organization that provides financial aid to the children of Marines killed in action or during tragedies like 9-11 or Benghazi if that had involved a Marine, for example.
And here's what's happening.
Four very lucky.
You can't have a better prize than this.
Very lucky grand prize winners, four of them, are gonna win a full ride trip for two to the EIB Southern Command in South Florida.
It's a grand prize winner.
You and the person of your choice will spend the day at the highly fortified Southern Command.
You'll meet me.
Spend the day with the overrated staff on the other side of the glass.
You'll watch the show be engineered.
It's not really produced enough or producer, but you'll watch Snerdley Screen the Calls.
If it's a good day for Sturdly, that is a show into itself.
You will have lunch at the studio.
You will um you'll have three days and two nights at a great resort in South Florida.
You'll have plenty of cash as part of your winnings to go out and have fine meals, entertainment, whatever, on your own.
You're gonna have round trip airfare, luxury hotel accommodation, fine meals, every detail covered.
All you have to do is sit back and enjoy.
And all you have to do to be automatically entered to win is shop at 2 if by tea.com right now.
Again, this is it.
This is the last day through 1159 p.m. Pacific time tonight.
And by the way, there's more there than just tea.
I don't want anybody thinking that you just have to buy tea.
There's other stuff there.
There's a like Ted T. Bear, cute little thing.
There's all kinds of stuff there.
And the and the Adventures of Rush Revere Portal is at 2FYT.com as well.
Now, in addition to the four grand prize winners, we have 50 first place prizes.
And you, if you if if if you win and you you you can transfer it.
You can give it to somebody else if you can't make the trip uh or what have you.
You can end up being the hero or you can be the big winner.
All of the rules are posted at 2ifyT.com.
But hurry hurry, because this is it.
This is the last day.
It's the last sweepstakes of the year.
And I'm I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the tea, which is foundation for all of this, which is the I'm I'm telling you the truth, if it's the best iced tea.
If you unscrew a cap on blueberry or diet blueberry ice tea, I swear you're going to think you're smelling the batter of blueberry muffins.
It's just you taste the blueberry and you taste the tea.
The blueberry doesn't overpower the tea.
Same thing with the peach, same thing with all the other flavors.
There's unsweetened, it's everything.
We got you covered.
It's the best in the world, and the price has been reduced for the grand sweepstakes.
But this is it.
1159 p.m. Pacific to if by tea.com, TWO, if by tea.com.
This is your last chance, that's it.
And you're automatically entered if you just go there and shop.
Pure and simple.
Okay, now our buddy Jim Pethacucas.
At the American Enterprise Institute has a piece, the most important economic chart in U.S. politics is kind of misleading.
His point here is that we cannot measure income inequality the same way that we always have.
As I said quite cleverly, I might add, in the beginning of the program, America used to be that you had a mom and a dad, and they got married.
Uh the mom and dad were a man and a woman.
And then the mom and dad, after getting married and working, they might have lived in a little apartment, they saved some money, they uh improved their lot in life, and we've got a little house somewhere.
And at some point in the house in the bedroom, there was some coitus or coitus.
Uh coitis for those of you in reality.
And then uh there came little Wally came along, a little beaver, a little uh Janie, what have you, and you ended up with uh mom and dad, man and woman, um, healthy children, 2.8 kids, white picket fence, and basically one income provided for all that.
However, that's not the way it is anymore.
There's a there's a faction out there promoting this idea that the rich are getting richer by taking all the money.
That is this is and that's what really distressed me about what the Pope was said to be saying.
If the rich were taking all the money.
And the the people that promote this notion of promoting the rich getting richer by taking all the money is an explanation for middle class stagnation.
The Obamas of the world and the take your pick of any Democrat that Chuck Schumer, Bill DeBlaisio, I don't care, take your pick.
They all claim that the middle class is stagnating because the rich are taking all the money.
The rich are denying the middle class their chance to advance.
Because the rich are taking all their money.
But as always, there's more to the story.
There's an economist named Russ Roberts.
He points out that at the same time the growth rate in family income was starting to flatten, which was 1973 through 1993.
At the time family income was flattening, meaning it wasn't going up as it had been since the 50s.
What was happening in those 20 years?
What was happening from 1973 to 1993?
The divorce rate, A, was skyrocketing.
Ergo, the number of households headed by women, was skyrocketing.
The number of single parent households was skyrocketing.
And all of this was especially true among poor families.
The economist Russ Roberts contends that that had a huge impact on data showing middle in middle class income stagnation.
And it would make total sense.
And you can't deny, nobody can deny that's what was happening in that 20-year period, 1973-93 divorce rate spiked.
Single parent familyhood, mothers and fathers breaking up, uh trading the kids back and forth.
And you cannot erase that massive cultural shift from the equation where you talk about income stagnation.
So the left wants you to believe at that point in 73 when middle class income started to level off.
That's when the rich got evil.
And then and then Reagan came along in the 80s, right in the middle of it, and the rich really started stealing people's money and really started hoarding everybody's money.
That's not what was happening at all.
It's that the mechanism, the nuclear family, the healthy unit that produced rising tide was being blown to smithereens, torn apart economically.
That demographic change is going to slow the average measured rate of growth, especially when those families are disproportionately created out of married families that are poorer than the average to begin with.
So that's that's the point with trying to compare middle class income to rich income today without ignoring the cultural rot that's taken place.
And maybe not rot, but the cultural changes that have taken place.
You're not comparing apples to apples anymore.
But that doesn't matter to the left, because that's not the point.
The truth is never the point.
The agenda is the point.
And the agenda here is that we need government equalizing these things because the rich are unfair and they're selfish, and they don't share anything, and they don't give anybody anything, and when they earn all the money, they hoard it.
And so the government's got to come in and equalize things.
And of course, the people on the lower end of the scale applaud that because it's a hell of a lot easier than going out and working for it.
Sorry to say, human nature being what it is.
Which takes me to the next story.
I have always I've been fired seven times.
I'll use myself as an example.
I worked for the baseball team, you know, the Kansas City Royals for five years.
And those five years I made the least amount of money as an adult I'd ever made.
And I was older than I'd ever been.
And when I left home at age 20 and went to Pittsburgh and Radio, I was earning three times what I was six years later.
This is not a criticism of anybody.
It's just things I had to learn.
Now, when I went to work for the Royals, the job I had was created.
They did not have somebody in charge of what was called group sales.
And the reason was that they didn't need it.
The phone was ringing.
They had this great group called the Royal Lancers selling season tickets.
And ticket sales were taking care of themselves largely because the team was always competitive, exciting, and winning great stars that were attracting people out.
So they didn't need schlubs in the office making phone calls to local groups trying to convince them to come to the ballpark.
But at some point, the marketing department said, you know what?
This isn't always going to be the case, so let's go get somebody and let's get started on this.
Well, uh, it started at like 13 grand a year because they really had never had it before and they didn't know what it was worth.
They didn't pay commissions.
I asked about that.
They said, well, if we give you a commission, we've got to give George Brett a commission every time he hits a home run, because that's going to sell some tickets tomorrow.
So we can't give you a commission.
So there weren't any.
Well, what I it was tough, uh I had to go out and establish my value and worth.
And the fact is that I didn't.
Because after five years, I got a thousand dollar a year increase, so the 13 became 18.
But it it the percentage increase was didn't change my lifestyle at all because it barely kept up with inflation.
But that's what the job was worth is the point to them.
They weren't paying me what they were paying because they hated me or didn't like me or resented me.
It's just what it was worth.
Now, had I found a way to Double attendance, I guarantee you it would have been different.
And that's the key.
While I'm living there and barely eking out, because I've it's a long story, but I had a home I had no business having.
I couldn't afford it.
And everybody said, don't sell it, that's your big investment.
So I held on to it, and it was wrong advice.
But anyway, what I would do, you know, I I lived in a shack, but it was right across the street from really great neighborhood.
And I'd peer across the street, drive by, what do those people do?
How did they do it?
What what determines who gets paid what?
Of course, there were all kinds of stereotypical answers.
Well, doctors and lawyers and so forth, but it was nobody that was trying to answer the question for me really knew what they were talking about.
I didn't figure it out personally, just by virtue of living and experience.
I didn't figure it out until the mid-80s when I finally moved to Sam Sacramento.
And Heritage here has a chart here that kind of details what the answer is.
I had read think tank pieces on wage increases and how they happened.
And the uh these scholars and these eggheads had put together their scholarly papers with statistics, and what they'd always said was that productivity equals wage increase, no matter the job.
The more you're productive, the more you're going to make.
Because the more you're productive, the more you're helping whoever you're employed by.
Except unions.
You see, in that case, it didn't matter.
The productivity was irrelevant because an auto workers' union, there's so many of them that you had a collective bargaining agreement.
They were all paid the same thing.
The only way to earn more was to work overtime.
You could not distinguish yourself by doing great work.
You might get a promotion within the union, but that that was my problem with unions, but other people didn't mind that, like being members, and that was cool.
But when I found out, and it was quite by accident, when I found out, when I learned that if I could insert myself directly into the income stream of the company that I would then be paid attention to.
They weren't going to pay attention because they're a nice guy.
Even if I got good ratings, there had to be something else that was tactile, something you could touch, something that had substantive meaning other than ratings or just numbers on a piece of paper.
They had to translate into something.
In this case, extra income.
And that's I I learned to call it ratings insurance.
And the radio ratings are up and down, the vagaries of them are kind of curious.
And I wanted insurance against a bad rating book or two.
And the insurance was a certain amount of money that they know I'm bringing in.
And what Heritage has put together here is a little chart that indicates that the value of an employee to a company is what determines the salary, not good vibes, not compassion, not a nice boss or a bad boss.
But there are certain jobs in every business that are worth X no matter who does them.
And if you don't like it, you've got to do something else.
There's certain companies, there are some exceptions to this.
Some people pay out of goodwill, but there's so few.
Some people give ridiculous bonuses that that but that's it it's it's extraordinary.
The most thing you can count on is a job is worth X to a company on its bottom line, and that's all it's going to pay.
Custodial job is worth X. A sales job is worth certain base plus commission if you can get it.
The point is, the way to increase what you pay, or what you are paid, is quite simple.
You find a way to make sure that you are noticed and you are seen as a reason that company or business is earning more money.
Involve yourself, insert yourself directly in The income stream.
That's how you do it.
Not the minimum wage, not the government coming in and equalizing things, and not how it's done.
Welcome back.
Great to have you on the EIB network, Rush Limbaugh here.
Now, uh here's the thing, folks.
Uh there there is nothing else that determines your value to a corporation or company.
I mean, then your ability to grow their income bottom line, what have you.
If you do that, that that's how it happens.
Now, how to become the owner of the company, that's a whole different thing, and that is an entirely different uh process.
I'm talking about status as an employee.
How do you get a raise?
You don't do it by demanding it.
You certainly don't do it with fairness, you don't appeal for compassion, you don't ask the government for a raising the minimum wage.
That's why when people talk about a living wage or raising the minimum wage and equal pay, you are forcing a corporation to pay people who are not worth that much, and you are altering the true value structure that exists inside any corporation.
And what's going to happen when you start demanding a living wage?
The only way that you can enforce that.
I mean, there is no such thing.
Who gets to determine it?
And where?
Where's the money come from?
It's all unpossible.
Bottom line is this, folks.
There is there is no law.
There are there are no laws that can change your worth to a company.
That cannot happen.
There's not a single law that can change how much you are worth or what your value is to a company, no matter how good it might feel.
But you can change your worth.
You can change how valuable you are, where you work, and It ain't gonna work everywhere.
Some people, some you know, some people are people that you work for are creeps.
It's but on balance, it's you that changes your worth, not a law.
Could work harder, be more productive, educated, passionate, find out what you really love to do.
It's any number of ways that this all happens.
People that work for government are not paid on their value.
They're in any way to determine it.
They're paid on the pay schedule.
It's but in the private sector, it's a whole different thing.
But the worst thing you can do is surround a wait for somebody to be fair.
Because that I guarantee you, there's nobody that you look up to and think, gee, I wish I could accomplish that.
Nobody did that by waiting for things to even out or uh be fair or what have you.
Here's uh here's Paul Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey Rosh, how are you?
It's an awful lot.
Very well, sir.
Thank you.
I have I have listened to you since the 80s, and uh myself and my family, we all think that uh you are you are certainly the way, the truth, and the light of of where we need to go.
So uh I I thank you for that.
Thank you, sir, very much.
And uh the insurance and the 30 30-hour work week.
Uh there was a report back, oh, about a year ago that talked about the median household income.
How in 2013 it went down for the first time in in uh in years.
Uh and I'm sorry, in 2012.
So you know, when you when you talk about employers lowering the hours that people can work because they truly cannot afford the health insurance that that the government is mandating that they pay for, you're reducing for millions of people that the household income that they have.
So that report hasn't come out yet.
So when you have a whole uh big segment of the population that has their Hours reduced.
Uh and then they're they're making what they make, maybe $8 an hour or so.
Their household income is going to take a drastic drop in 2013.
So in the State of the Union address, here comes the president saying we're going to raise the minimum wage.
And of course, the conclusion is who's responsible for that.
Obama.
Obama, the Democrat Party.
The plummeting average or mean household worth or or household income is plummeting because of Obama and his policies.
Exactly right, sir.
Absolutely.
So if he raises the minimum, if he's successful in getting a minimum wage raised, he's going to look like the savior.
People's wages are going to go back up, and they're still only going to work 30 hours a week.
So the loser in all of that's not people who have to buy food.
But see, that's not how it happens.
That's how it appears that it'll happen on paper.
Oh, we're going to raise the minimum wage.
Oh, people's incomes are going to go up.
Oh, it'll compensate for being cut back to 30 hours.
The minimum wage as it exists is a damper on income.
The minimum wage is an arbitrary value placed on all work.
There's no there's no rhyme to reason to it.
You are telling somebody who owns a business that the minimum you can pay is X, with doesn't matter whether somebody's qualified or not.
So what you're doing is to that you're you're you're denying inexperienced people access to the workforce where they can start gaining experience because at some point the minimum wage is so high you have to hold out and hire somebody that has a modicum of experience, at least knows some of what they're doing.
But at the same time when you arbitrarily, without any other value being relevant, raise the minimum wage, the the owner of the business is not sitting there with a pile of money in the back closet and says, Oh, okay, you want me to raise the minimum wage on Harrow Member?
Fine, I have the they don't have the money.
Obama does not know because he doesn't care, and because he's never been there, he doesn't understand how fragile and largely because of his policies, most small businesses are today.
They do not have, they just can't sit there and pay a minimum wage increase.
Many of them are going to fire a person or two or more in order to have the money to pay the remaining employees the new mandated minimum wage.
A business allocates X for labor.
So Obama comes in and says, Well, we're gonna make you pay another buck and a half per hour for oh well, what's that due to the X factor, the the labor?
It's just gone up.
Well, what if there isn't any appreciable increase in business to cover it?
It's got to come from somewhere.
And the what what has always happened is that people end up being fired or losing their job.
And this on top now being cut to 30 hours a week or less, people end up being let go so that those remaining can make the minimum wage.
Then when that happens, Obama and the Democrats come along and start talking about how mean and selfish and greedy business owners are.
And this has been the Democrat Party trick for as long as I can remember.
And there's there's I don't care.
These people have been that they had their hours cut and have lost health care.
There is not a minimum wage increase being talked about that can restore what they have lost via their hour, hours being cut.
There isn't enough money here.
That's not what this is about.
It isn't about making people wealthier.
It it isn't about people making more money.
This is a pure political play.
This is about the poor being fooled into thinking only Obama cares about them, and that nobody else does.
Obama is who has created the atmosphere that they can't thrive.
Obama is their biggest obstacle.
Obama and his policies are their biggest problem.
And yet he gets to portray himself as the solution.
And it's and that's all this attempt is.
It's all it's been for since the minimum wage was created.
It's it's it's uh you like I say, there is not a law that can make somebody more valuable to a business, not a law that can make somebody rich.
Well, wait a minute now.
Obama can play crony capitalism with CEOs and make them richer.
But not for you.
It's not gonna work that way for you.
Because you don't bring enough to the table.
All you bring is a vote.
You run a corporation, you can bring a lot to Obama.
This is hideous stuff.
It uh it really is.
You know what else raising a minimum wage could result in, ladies and gentlemen?
It could, in some cases, um, lead to employers hiring illegals.
Employers don't have to pay the Obamacare penalty for illegal aliens either.
It's you know that that happens, and the illegals sincerely they'll work for less than minimum wage.
You know, this idiots sit up there and they do not understand the dynamic reaction to the things they impose on people.
Hey, raise taxes, hey, these suckers will just sit there and pay it.
Gonna raise the minimum wage on businesses, they'll just sit there and pay it rather than trying to find a way around it, which is what happens.
And they never do get it.
It back to the phones we go.
Here's uh Anna, San Pedro, California.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, it's honored to talk to you.
I am so nervous right now.
I just want to cry.
I am able to talk to you.
God bless you.
Well, thank you.
You don't sound nervous at all.
For my six-month-old grandson for the Christmas.
People are thinking I'm crazy.
Six-month-old cannot read.
But I thought when he grow up, he'd be able to read it.
I enjoy the book a lot, and I'm looking forward for any book you write for the kids.
I'm the first on the line to buy.
Well, God bless you.
That you've you have uh you've made my day.
You know, and you know, I'm I am so gratified.
Don't listen to these people.
Your son's gonna be able to read someday.
And if this is something you want him to read, more power to you.
I already did, and I enjoy it very much.
I mean, every morning after I having my coffee, I read one chapter, one chapter, I finish it now.
When I am going to go in North California for Christmas, that's going to be one of my gifts to my grandson.
Well, you know what?
I'm gonna I want you to hang on, Anna, because I want to send you a couple of audio versions of the book by Federal Express.
If you hang on Mr. Snerdley, we'll get your address and we'll send those out because your son can listen to it before he'll be able to read it.
We'll double dose him on this.
Be a great way.
That and I read it, so it's it it has added value.
We got we don't grandson.
That okay, grandson.
Son, grandson, what is it?
Little kid, right?
Now, I got greatest email.
It's William Bradford got a uh a fan mail letter at at the website, and this this guy is writing, he didn't know about William Bradford.
He did he got out of high school ten years ago.
He didn't know about William Bradford, he wasn't taught about William Bradford and the pilgrims.
And he this guy wrote this letter.
He is in such admiration of William Bradford and what he did.
And he's he's he sent us an email that's a fan letter to William Bradford of the Pilgrims.
Uh and I can't tell you the mail we're getting is so gratifying, folks.
A guy ten years out of high school who was not told about William Bradford, and he feels like he's learned something crucially important.
I have it made my day.
It just did.
Sadly, my friends, we have come to another screeching halt of today's excursion into uh broadcast excellence, another busy broadcast day uh at its end.
But not really, though.
It never really ends unless I'm not gonna be here the next day.
And I am gonna be here the next day, the next day is tomorrow.
We'll be here in 21 hours and be open line Friday and do our best to squeeze in some more calls, at least more than we get in usually, Monday through Thursday.
Thank you so much.
Hope you remember everything said on the program today because it was utterly crucially important.
▲
Export Selection