Like the other candidates, Hillary Clinton is running as a savior of the middle class. But how much will central economic planning at home and a militaristic foreign policy really help the American middle?
Like the other candidates, Hillary Clinton is running as a savior of the middle class. But how much will central economic planning at home and a militaristic foreign policy really help the American middle?
Like the other candidates, Hillary Clinton is running as a savior of the middle class. But how much will central economic planning at home and a militaristic foreign policy really help the American middle?
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams who is the Executive Director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
And Daniel, welcome to our program once again.
Back in the saddle.
We're very good.
But today I'd like to talk about the middle class.
You know, we just heard from Hillary.
Believe it or not, she's going to be a candidate for the president of the United States.
It sort of was a surprise, but she finally announced.
But we should be relieved because she's saying exactly the same things I'm saying.
I've been concerned about the middle class, and now Hillary's concerned about the middle class.
And she's had a little bit of experience because when she left the White House, she was broke and Bill was broke and therefore they picked themselves up there by their bootstraps and they're no longer in the middle class.
So I'm sure they're in tune with our philosophy.
But this is something that's been around for a long time and something has fascinated me about the middle class.
And I just wonder how much you've actually thought about this and how do you work this into because there's a couple reasons for this and some of it even has to do with our military.
That's true and it makes you wonder about Hillary's dedication to the middle class or even I guess I wouldn't question her motive but her perception of what hurts the middle class.
If you look at her foreign policy over the years as First Lady she supported the U.S. attack on Yugoslavia which was not only costly in lives but just in the bottom line cost an enormous amount of money.
As a senator she voted for the Iraq war and supported that trillion dollar boondoggle.
As Secretary of State she was one of the big cheerleaders for the invasion and attack on Libya which cost just the attack cost over a billion dollars and then the cleanup of the mess Lord knows how much that will cost and she's been very bellicose about Syria.
She was in favor of the U.S. going in there right away in Syria and she's also been very strongly opposed to Russia and interested in getting involved in Ukraine.
So I don't know do you think that costs any money for the middle class?
How does that work?
You know this is the whole thing.
Immediately my thoughts are this this is paid by our middle class.
But what about before talking about them what about the middle class in these countries that we attack that have not attacked us?
And what about the children?
You know children died.
What about the sanctions on Iraq when it was estimated and admitted to by the administration that 500,000 children and citizens of Iraq died from sanctions and the bombs.
So yes the middle class there that was unconcerned but sometimes that is ignored.
Like you I don't think they purposely set out I want to destroy the middle class.
I think it's always well intended but I think there are explanations on this.
Take the militarism which is generally a conservative idea that you have to spend, spend, spend on the military and goes into a military industrial complex.
And people say well how does that hurt the middle class?
It's going to help the military industry.
And they believe in military Keynesianism.
It's good for jobs, so it's good for the middle class.
But that's a very narrow group.
If you look at the big picture, you find out that war costs billions of dollars.
It hurts trade.
It encourages more sanctions.
And when you pay for it, you say, well, they can't raise taxes.
The middle class can't pay more taxes.
How could the middle class suffer?
Well, the middle class suffers the most because some of the money will be borrowed, but there's a limit to how much our government can borrow to fight these wars.
And then what do they do?
They have to resort to printing the money.
And that's where the middle class really suffers.
This is a known phenomenon in Austrian economics that if you undermine the value of the currency, that you really hurt the middle class more than the wealthy.
And you can see this.
The money goes to the government.
Money goes to the bureaucrats, goes to the military, goes to the military-industrial complex.
It goes to the banking system that runs these things.
And the middle class ends up with the difficulty in the economy.
You have booms and busts.
The middle class loses their jobs.
And it goes on and on.
So it's not good for the middle class.
So my argument is not only do we have the Keynesianism in the military, but you have the ordinary Keynesianism, which conservatives don't like.
And that is this idea that they can plan the economy and regulate the economy.
And we have the entitlement system.
So, you know, entitlements are supposed to help the poor.
So what kind of argument can we make against them saying, well, oh, yeah, that's a good intention, but does it really help the poor, the whole entitlement system?
I think people have the false impression that the money comes from magic.
It falls from the sky.
It comes from somewhere.
But if you look at the statistics of the middle class over the past few decades, you know, it certainly has shrunk.
Their earning power has declined in absolute terms.
So there's nothing that this decades of economic planning has done to help the middle class, at least in terms of statistics.
You know, and I frequently use the argument, it's probably 100 years of this, you know, starting World War I and the Federal Reserve and income taxes, and everybody wants to help the middle class.
Nobody's against the middle class.
Nobody gets up and says, I'm against the middle class because that's where the votes are.
So you have to convince people that your heart is with the middle class.
But here you have basically conservatives who aren't libertarian on a lot of issues and liberals who aren't libertarian on especially economic issues.
And they've been in charge for 100 years.
I mean, we have left our roots, the roots that were planted by the founders, where liberty was the important issue and it wasn't so sharply divided with liberty being in two pieces, economic liberty and personal liberty.
And so the results are in.
So I don't even know how they have a right to talk about it.
I use that word loosely.
They don't deserve much credibility.
If they've been in charge 100 years, what are they going to do?
Spend more money.
You know, the Paul Krugmans.
Well, you know, yes, we're in a trouble and we agree with you that there is a trouble and we've had this downturn, but it's only because people won't spend the money.
And if they won't spend the money, the government's responsible to spend the money.
So I see no way how they can come up, you know, with any answer to this problem of helping the middle class.
You know, another way that this bellicose foreign policy hurts the middle class that you don't often think about is, especially with the middle and the lower middle class, is really what we almost call the poverty draft.
When the middle class jobs have been destroyed, the outsourcing, the industrial sector, the regulations that have caused that to happen, you do have a lot of people that are forced or make the choice to go into the military with the perpetual wars going on.
They're suffering.
You've talked about this many times.
Look at the rate of suicide for veterans who've been in combat.
Thousands of them are killed.
So you're not helping the middle class with this bellicose foreign policy, even in a physical sense, because they're suffering and dying.
Yeah, but to get the people to endorse it, because governments generally get an endorsement from the people, and they can rebel against it.
Well, on the militarism, it's the use of patriotism.
Because if you're against the wars, you're against the troops, you're not pro-American, you're not willing to spread American goodness, and you know, you're a bad person.
But when it comes to taking care of the poor and the shrinking middle class, then you don't have a heart.
You don't want to take care of people.
So I think they convince people and say, yeah, there are some downside to it, but we have to be safe and secure, and we have to have a safety net, and on and on, and it never changes.
The approach by those who want to and have used the government, that means they use force to try to dictate, and they may well be very well-intentioned, but the results are so bad.
In opposition to this would be the approach that we would advocate, and that is the use of liberty, more individual liberty.
Develop a system where there's incentive, where people can benefit from hard work and become self-reliant.
And it would be a voluntary system, and people don't trust it.
So I see it as a job for us who believe in liberty to convince people that that is what they have to go to.
They have to give up on this whole idea of entitlements and militarism to raise the bootstraps of the middle class.
You know, what always frustrates me, the critics of your approach and of those like you, they had this idea that if it wasn't for the government stealing our money and giving it to their preferred groups, that somehow in a libertarian society, people would just walk by and let people starve.
There would be no charity.
It would be pure libertinism.
We'd be sitting around smoking marijuana and letting people die of hunger.
And that was certainly not the case before the state took such a large role in our economy, right?
Yeah, and I think one of the things that really makes that point and why we can't expect immediate solution for a lot of what's going on politically right now and Hillary's worrying about the middle class.
And that has to do with money in politics.
And my position is that in a free society, it's your money, spent it the way you want.
But why is it that right now the amounts are going up skyrocketing?
Tens of billions of dollars spent.
And it's going to be the biggest expenditure ever in the presidential race.
What is the motivation?
And of course, the motivation is government is doing too much.
And who spends the money in order to get their special interest?
The military industrial complex, the drug companies, the medical companies, and on and on, they spend the money.
And it's pretty hard to argue that they're going to be worrying about the middle class.
The middle class is not going to, even if we got the middle class to agree, we want my freedom back.
We want to be left alone.
They don't have these tens of billions of dollars.
But the only way I can see the solution for this is to shrink the size and scope of government where there's no incentive to spend $10 billion.
If you're a good businessman and you have $10 billion, you should be investing it and producing jobs.
You shouldn't be investing it in control of the government.
Tens of Billions Spent00:01:35
That's where I think the problem is.
Doesn't it seem funny that the more they spend on elections, the more alike the candidates seem to be?
Yeah, that's right.
And the weaker the middle class gets, and the middle class certainly has gotten weaker.
So we'll give all those who talk about the middle class the benefit of the doubt that they're well motivated.
But I would suggest that they try to learn and understand why individual liberty Is important, why free markets are important, why we need to look at the Federal Reserve and find out how they, through their efforts to centrally economic plan, are destructive to the middle class, encourages the war, and has led us to this crisis period where we are facing a total bankruptcy with this excessive debt.
In no way they're going to pay this entitlement system on this debt due.
So, someday we'll continue our efforts because I believe we are making progress.
I met with a group of young people this past weekend, and they still give me encouragement because they think they're listening to this message.
The message of liberty is a wonderful message.
And for the best of the arguments, is what you do at the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Because I'm convinced that my support goes to the Institute because I do believe that the issue and the principles of liberty is the way you achieve peace and prosperity, not only just for the middle class, but for everybody.
And how can anybody be against peace and prosperity?
Anyway, I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.