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Aug. 30, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
28:59
August 30, 2016, Tuesday, Hour #3
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right, 99.9% of the time.
It is great to be with you, folks, as it always is the telephone number if you want to be on the program 800 282882 and an email.
You can send an email.
New email address L Rushbow at EIB net.us.
L Rushbow at EIB net.us.
A uh a new domain.
Just one more thing on the on the Apple story.
This thing will be tied up for years with the appeals and everything.
There's one reason Apple has so much money in Europe.
You know what Apple's cash pile is right now?
It's 231 billion dollars and climbing.
And that's I mean, it's profit, yeah.
But that's how much they've made that they have not reinvested, and their RD budget is huge.
It's just a phenomenal pile of money.
You know how much of that 231 billion dollars is being held overseas?
About 210 billion of it.
It is striking.
Maybe 20 billion, if I read that right this morning, 20 billion of Apple's 231 billion is in the United States.
Meaning, when they say cash, it's not all greenbacks in the bank.
This is this means it's uh it's it's invested in various assets, stocks bonds like anybody else would invest.
Uh it's fairly liquid.
But you know why 220 billion of it is overseas?
It's not strictly because Apple is a global corporation, it's because the U.S. tax rate.
United States has the highest business tax rate in the world, 35%.
So Apple received favorable tax proposals from European countries, including Holland and Ireland because they wanted jobs, they wanted an economic boost, and they offered Apple attractive tax packages, which is common.
I mean, how many of you have heard of the state of New York exempting taxes for whatever business that they want to invest in the state, open in the state, build factories in the state.
This happens all the time.
So it's nothing unfair about it, it's nothing unusual.
It's the way markets work.
And if there are confiscatory tax rates in play, you can guarantee that smart money people are going to do everything they can to avoid them.
And it isn't irresponsible.
I mean, you can make the argument Apple has the duty to shareholders to maximize profits so as to maximize stock price and dividends if they pay it.
All that, of course, is true.
But it just makes sense anyway.
It's Apple's money.
It isn't the European Union's money.
It's not Barack Obama's money or John Kerry's or Hillary Clinton's.
It's Apple's.
But if you're Elizabeth Warren, you come along and say, you didn't build that.
You didn't build that iPhone, we made that possible for you.
All that rot gut rigmarole.
So the European Union is like any other massively bloated overweight bureaucracy.
It's out of money.
They can't manage their own finances.
They have the ability to take money from anybody anywhere, anytime.
It's called taxes and fees and taxes and fees and user fees, and who the hell knows what all mechanisms.
And even at that, they're broke.
And it's typical the people who do not work and who have nothing to do with the production of the money they have no appreciation for how it was acquired.
If you can get money by taking it from other people, you're going to think you can always get money by taking it from other people.
And if you have a lot of money and you've never earned it, guaranteed you are never going to appreciate the value of that money.
And that's government for you.
Government confiscates wealth.
Government does not create wealth.
Pure and simple.
Wait a minute, Rush, what about defense contracts?
Well, the government's not doing the work.
And it's taxpayer money to begin with.
It isn't government money.
Government doesn't produce jack.
All government does is get in the way.
Government could do much more than they do by getting out of the way.
There could be even more wealth.
Apple could have even more money.
Well, anyway.
United States government would love some Apple's money, but not enough to alter the tax rate.
So 35%'s what it is, and Apple's going to keep their money overseas.
And they have arranged for all of their sales to be recorded.
They've got an office, and I think in Reno, and they've got arranged for most of their sales to be recorded in Ireland.
And people say, wait, they don't make anything in Ireland.
Yeah, I know the actual assembly process is in China, but their supply chain is worldwide.
Most people don't ever, and there's no reason they would.
Most people never stop to think.
Just take an iPhone or take a any any smartphone, I don't care if it's Samsung's or anybody.
What goes into making that phone a reality is beyond most people's comprehension.
Apple's supply chain is massive.
It is intricate.
And it is one of the most well-oiled machines in and of itself in all of American corporate life.
They've got it down Pat.
When Apple is on a roll, you know how often they turn over their inventory?
I'm talking about everything iPhones, iPads, Macintosh computers, whatever.
When Apple is humming, they turn over their inventory every eight days.
Stop and think of that worldwide.
To have your manufacturing down so that you're not saddled with a big bunch of inventory you're holding on to, which just drags down everything.
It slows manufacturing.
It it that slows everything in the supply chain.
It's supplose the it slows down the uh profitability of all your suppliers.
To be over to be able to have your manufacturing such that you are able to turn total inventory or five to eight days, five to eight days in a global circumstance.
It's just phenomenal.
And for these governments to come along and try to claim that Apple's cheating here and cheating there.
It's it's it's it's typical.
Anyway, what has to happen, Apple's going to appeal this, so they have to put the money, it's about 13 billion euros, translates to 15 billion dollars.
They have to put the money in escrow.
Some of that 15 billion is interest and penalties on the original base amount that the fine is.
So Apple will appeal and it goes on.
It's going to be years before this is solved.
It's not going to have any immediate impact on the Apple stock price.
It's just government doing what government does, particularly these clowns of the European Union, which are just inept.
Who are just inept?
Well, anyway, I was reading my tech blogs about this today.
And the tech blogs are young, millennial and younger journalists.
And I want to read to you just one excerpt from one of them.
I mean, I could probably find this thinking in all of them.
Apple likes to present itself as a friendly open company that is on the side of consumers.
Yet here it is, arguing that in its complex financial arrangements, which serve to dramatically reduce its overseas tax bills are justified.
It does this at a time when the public mood is very much against such maneuvering.
Oh, okay, so the public mood is against Responsible fiscal behavior.
So what should Apple do?
Well, given that Apple isn't short of cash by any stretch, why doesn't Apple just take the moral high road and voluntarily pay the taxes it really believes should be due?
You see, this is what we're up against.
Dealing with millennials.
So now it's a moral issue.
Apple has lots of money.
The way they arrange their finances is very complex.
It's bad PR to scrap and fight over every dollar.
Apple should just pay up.
It'd be a great PR move.
Apple's customers, and we, of course, in the tech media, we would love Apple not.
Because of course, giving government money, why that is the supreme definition of morality, don't you see?
Apple should just figure out what it owes morally and pay that, whatever the real tax bill is.
Isn't that instructive?
Doesn't that tell us a lot?
So Apple, as a PR move, should not argue this.
They should not even dispute it.
They should just pay up and maybe even pay a little more than they owe.
And get great PR benefits as a result.
Does anybody think that's what would happen?
What do you think would happen, Mr. Snerdley, if Apple followed this advice and issued a press release today by Tim Cook, the CEO.
Hi, I'm Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
We have just been told the European Union that we have underpaid our taxes by $15 billion.
We dispute this, but because we want our customers to think we are moral people, we're going to actually give them $20 billion.
By the way, our new iPhones come out next week, and we really hope you snap them up.
What would be the practical result of Apple publicly announcing they're going to pay either exactly what they owe with no dispute or adding to it for the well that's true?
The next thing to happen would be every tin horn government dictator and bloated bureaucracy in the world would be lining up.
Demanding that Apple exercise its morality with them.
And then what would they say Apple should do?
It should pay it.
It should pay what these governments say.
That's the only way to have good PR and buzz.
It's just they should do it.
They've got so much money, got more than they need.
They've got look at that cash horn Apple has.
They don't need all of that.
I guess there's really nothing new in that kind of thinking about wealth and so forth.
What is missing, however, is the acknowledgement or the appreciation for what it took to create that wealth.
And this is what sadly is often missing.
People see the wealth.
They don't have any idea what went into creating it.
And if a corporation's involved, they might even think it's all because of cheating, lying, maybe even killing their customers, like big pharma does and big drug does and big oil.
But I doubt in the real world it's not going to have much of an impact on you.
But it's an interesting exercise, instructive in taxation and bureaucracy and government.
And how government behaves.
And they're out of money.
And it's not just the European Union.
There isn't a government in the world that's in the in the black.
And they're going to go look for money wherever they can get it.
If it's your pension fund that your money's in, if it's a 401k, if it's a hedge fund, it don't.
Don't put it past them in dire straits, government can do.
Look at what do you hear what happened in Sweden?
Did I mention this?
In Sweden, where they have been overrun by quote unquote refugees from Syria and other places.
They've run out of places to house them where the refugees will accept.
The refugees are refusing to accept the housing Sweden is providing.
So you know what Sweden did?
They went to the wealthy who have second homes.
And they basically confiscated them.
Said, look, wealthy people, you're only using that big house six weeks a year.
Well, we're taking it.
And we're going to house the refugees in there for a while.
They just announced they were going to do it.
There is nothing stopping these people.
Especially if nobody stands up and opposes it.
And it's eventually going to work its way down to everybody.
So great story, great.
It's actually a column or an editorial here in the investors' business daily.
Have to take a break coming up here, but this is interesting.
It's uh it's a piece about what we face in our future with so many men unemployed.
So many men out of work.
What are the generational meanings and indications of this?
And it's pretty fascinating.
Gotta take an obscene profit break here, folks, but we come back, don't go away.
Here is uh Joel in Newark, Delaware.
Great to have you on the program.
You're up, sir.
How are you?
Mega Diddles Rush from the first state of Delaware.
Thank you very much.
Great to have you here.
Retired.
I'm a re I'm formerly a U.S. Navy veteran and I'm a retired police officer from Massachusetts.
I was up there when Romney was governor and Dukakis was up there.
And I'm a reformed Democrat.
I'm a Trump supporter, and I support him to the hundredth 100%.
If Hillary Clinton gets away with what she's doing, then we are in big trouble.
If just think of this for a minute.
If it was any member of the general public, me, you, anybody, did what she was doing, we'd be indicted, we'd be in jail, and our accounts would be frozen.
Well, yes, but let me ask you a pointed question about that.
There's got to be a little way.
Hang on just a minute, Joel.
Let me ask you a question.
How in the world could you and I, as private citizens, have anything that a foreign government would want to buy from us.
Well, it could be suppose you were suppose you were a corporation selling um whatever.
Oh, oh, okay, okay.
I thought you meant you and me just as average citizens walking down the street coming out of Walmart.
But I mean, it's just it's just the same thing as well, lo and behold, we've got enough of them in this country.
You're average drug dealer.
Okay.
They make millions of dollars in profit, ship the money overseas to be laundered, and it comes back clean.
Right.
Okay.
No, that's a folks.
He's exactly right.
If any of us, or if any CEO had endeavored to sell access to the corporation at pay-for-play basis like Hillary was doing in Secretary of State, you'd be on a long walk.
There's no question about that.
By the way, folks, a reminder, I uh if you miss the first half hour, the first hour of the program, make sure you go to Rush Limbaugh.com sometime today or tonight and revisit the uh opening monologue on a new movie out called Greater.
I I don't want to repeat uh what I said, but it's all there.
It's a new movie that I really hope as many of you who can get a chance to see it.
And that's all I'll say.
I don't want to waste any more time, not waste time.
I never waste time, but previously discussed it.
Just go to Rush Limbaugh.com and find out why if you miss the first hour of the program.
Okay, independent or investors business daily, IBD headline caution men at work.
While the Fed and government policymakers fret Over full employment.
A new study by one of America's leading demographers and economists argues that in fact we're in the midst of a full-blown unemployment crisis.
That is hidden.
It's not hidden from me.
Anybody with half a brain knows that we have an unemployment.
Well, you have 94 million Americans not working.
The labor force participation rate is right now around 62%.
That's the lowest it's been since the 70s, the Jimmy Carter 70s.
This Friday, a new jobs report is going to come out.
If the Wall Street consensus is correct, it's going to show the unemployment rate continuing to hover around 5%.
But that is nowhere near the whole story.
Guy named Nicholas Eberstat, a fellow, that just means he's a thinker at the American Enterprise Institute argues in a new book called Men Without Work.
It's coming up next week, that we are suffering not from full employment, but massive underemployment, and in particular, nearly one out of six working age men have no job and are no longer even looking for one.
A release for his book calls this a hidden time bomb with far-reaching economic, social, and political consequences.
With 10 million fewer male workers in the labor force than we should have, it is hard to disagree.
This portends an entire generation of men with only a tenuous connection to the discipline and rewards of work.
Now I gotta say something that's gonna be in this day and age, it's entirely yet unnecessarily provocative.
For the longest time, you know, the values of work are many and varied.
And some of the direct, such as producing income.
I mean, you have to live.
Work is how you earn your living, it's how you pay the bills.
I mean, that's the direct number one benefit of work, but there are so many others.
And it has always been true, whether the feminazis want to hear it or not.
When talking about men, and men and women are different, and I don't care what anybody thinks, says, or tries to say otherwise, men and women are different, and men have derived their sense of self-worth from their work.
Not only, but a great, great percentage, a great percentage of the self-worth that men have comes from their career, their job, their work.
That is how they define themselves.
Their job, their work, their career, their achievements is from where they derive their self-esteem.
And it may be becoming true for an increasing number of women, as our culture evolves.
I'm not trying to exclude women, but for the longest time, that was one of the unhidden, unmentioned, but very tangible aspects of men working.
And you take that away, and you have a problem on your hands.
Not just the idle time, not just the lack of revenue, not just no income being produced, not just the inability to provide for yourself.
The whole idea for many past generations of men was the test was, the objective was, the measure of a man was how well he provides for his family, protection, income, and all that.
Now, feminism sought to attack that because they saw that as giving men more substance and more meaning, not including women and so forth.
But look, all that's cognamy because it happens to be psychologically and physiologically true.
Men do not derive their self esteem for whether or not they can play golf, how many beers they can consume on Friday night, or any of that.
sadly some do, but you mean I'm speaking here now in traditional majority ways.
If you take all that away, you have a recipe for big problems.
You have men who feel worthless, purposeless, and unnecessary.
And that is what is being discussed here.
An entire generation of men with only a tenuous connection to the discipline and rewards of work.
It'll have an enormous impact on future generations of young men.
It's not exclusively a problem of the lower income classes, however.
Today, women make up 57% of all college graduates.
Meaning that men in the current generation will be enormously underrepresented in the well play well-paying professions that require a college degree.
That is not, by the way, by accident.
There is a reason fewer and fewer men go to college.
There's a reason fewer and fewer men want to go to college.
So this guy's theory is that in short, men are in danger of becoming a hidden and combustible underclass.
And that's not good.
A pull quote from the piece.
This is indeed a silent time bomb ticking at the heart of our economy.
To ignore it will surely lead the U.S. down the path to terminal economic and productivity decline, a lower standard of living, and also ran status among the global economies.
Men and women are different, and men not working, men not producing, are men who don't have a lot of self-worth.
And you know what happens from that.
If you don't like yourself, forget anybody else.
If you don't value yourself, if you have a perpetual inferiority complex, it's just in and of itself, that's not good.
Exacerbated by these kinds of demographic trends.
Okay, Rice, so what's your solution?
Well, that's not we're we're we're not at that stage yet.
I mean, I doubt that a whole lot of people would automatically agree with any of this, so we still have to reach the quote unquote consensus on the existence of this problem.
The piece has all kinds of stats that I could share with you, but it's numbers, you lose track of numbers when you're listening to them, you don't have them in front of you.
But over the last 30 years, the labor market trajectory of men in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions skill acquisition, employment rates, occupational stature, and real wage levels.
And that occupational stature is every bit as important as the wage levels.
The two go together.
Gotta take a break.
Be back after this.
Don't go away.
Back to the phones.
This is Robin Houston.
Rob, you're next in the EIB network.
Hello, sir.
Yes, hello, Rush.
First time caller, long time listener.
Great to have you here.
And uh I just this thing with the with the wiener guy, Anthony Wiener.
I was just wondering, it seemed like the media is is going out of their way to avoid uh any kind of uh uh raising of the question, but is there any agency that may be investigating the wiener family uh and what I mean by that, uh the welfare, the safety of the child with all that's going on with uh with with the father.
Uh uh it seemed like if this was an ordinary just everyday citizen, yeah.
Getting caught with these kinds of uh uh issues going on that that could be documented that.
I think you've got a good point.
I think you got a good point.
If it was any other Tom Dick or Harry out there doing this, child services would be on the scene already.
But what you're forgetting out there, Rob, is the Hillary Clinton is involved.
And there's nobody that cares about children more.
Nobody has done more for children than Hillary Clinton.
Not a single person alive.
There's nobody that cares more about kids.
There's nobody that's done more for kids.
You know, well, Rush, if that's true, then how did...
It ended up that Wiener was doing all that with the kids.
Hillary can't be blamed for what she doesn't know.
Well, Huma can leave a child with him because Human knows that Hillary is a good friend.
And there's nobody that has done more for children than Hillary Clinton.
There's nobody cares more for children than Hillary Clinton.
It is a legitimate question.
I, of course, am spoofing here, but it isn't.
Here you get Wiener as Carlos Danger acknowledging that he knows he's going to be discovered.
And he's texting out these crazy photos with the baby there.
Where's the mom?
Why's the mom leaving the kid with the known sexter?
It is a legitimate question.
You know damn, child protective services would be in there.
Major crimes unit would be in there.
Who knows who all would be in there?
Trying to claim that the child was in an unsafe invites.
A good question, Rob, it really is.
Buck Sexton Late of the CIA will be here tomorrow as guest host, and we'll be talking with Neil McDonough, the star and executive producer of Greater in the two o'clock hour, the last hour of the program tomorrow.
Have a great one, folks.
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