Aug. 20, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
32:25
3053 Criticism: The Truth About Bernie Sanders
Stefan addresses some of the responses to his recent "The Truth About Bernie Sanders" video - and the important facts many Sanders supporters seem to be missing. Bernie Sanders is a Democratic candidate for President of the United States. Sanders spent 16 years as Vermont’s sole congressman in the House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006. Sanders has amassed considerable grassroots support relative to democratic frontrunner Hilary Clinton and is incredibly popular for his opposition to income inequality.
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom In Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
Some comments on my recent video on Bernie Sanders.
I really appreciate everyone's feedback and here is what people had to say.
First, I love how a philosophy major is correcting a political science major on economics.
Stefan has some good points as usual, but he is not understanding how wealth inequality is affecting the economy and the role of the super-rich and corporations in corrupting policies.
He is also pointing out all the places where socialist programs don't work and ignoring where they do work.
Alright, so, of course, corporations corrupt politics.
That's how it works.
When you give the government a lot of power to redistribute income, the first people who want to use that power are the rich and powerful.
It's not a shock.
If you want to understand how government power works, my friends, there's only one thing you need to do.
Whatever government program you want, whatever power you want it to have, whatever free stuff you want it to give people, whatever you want it to tax and borrow and spend and regulate, You need to imagine that power, whatever power you want to give government, that power being in the hand of the worst people or the worst person that you know.
That's what's going to happen sooner or later.
Even if Bernie Sanders is a wonderful guy, he's not going to live forever, and that power is still going to exist.
The power you want Bernie Sanders to wield on your behalf is still going to exist when some really nasty guy gets into power.
And assuming that power is only going to draw the best and most peaceful and nicest and most benevolent and most altruistic people in the known universe is naive and fantastical and viciously self-destructive.
Whatever power you want, just imagine the very worst person in the world, your greatest enemy, the nastiest person you can imagine, having that power.
Sooner or later, that's what's going to happen.
When Bernie Sanders leaves and somebody else moves into his position, all the powers you gave to Bernie Sanders to tax and spend is going to be passed into the Iron fist of that new person.
So that's really important.
I fully understand that.
Corporations corrupt things.
Guess what?
Bernie Sanders wants to give out free higher education.
Well, free higher education are universities.
Universities are corporations.
They're going to corrupt the process.
It's not going to change.
Oh, and also socialist programs don't work in ignoring where they do work.
I'm a philosopher and in particular I am a moral philosopher.
And the argument from consequences, the argument from pragmatism, the argument from effects are completely irrelevant.
You don't look at A case of rape and try and figure out, well, who benefited and who lost and what happened?
What you do is you say, well, rape is immoral.
And that's the job of the immoral philosopher.
So, sure, socialist programs work very well for some people.
The military-industrial complex works very well for the shareholders of Boeing Corporation and other corporations that supply death machines to the sociopaths who run U.S. foreign policy.
It works very well.
Wars work very well for generals and some soldiers and bureaucrats and so on.
Wars work very well for politicians who get to thump their chests and get people to unite against a common enemy and forget about criticizing domestic agencies.
So what works and what doesn't?
Yeah.
When you get socialized healthcare, then people who are sick and who either haven't saved or don't have the money to pay for their healthcare And aren't loved enough by those around them to have people chip in for their healthcare.
They get healthcare.
Absolutely.
It works for some and it doesn't work for others.
And because of that, it can never be a guide for society.
Because people will vote along the lines of self-interest rather than virtue.
What matters is that the government initiates the use of force to transfer money from some people to other people.
That's immoral.
And therefore it doesn't matter what works and what doesn't.
Slavery worked for some people and didn't work for other people, but we don't judge it based on that.
We judge slavery based on is it moral to own other human beings?
Of course not.
It's evil and that's all that you need to know.
He says, they are far from perfect, but much better than our current model we are running in the U.S. If he does not believe Bernie, that his ideas will help people, then maybe he will believe Robert Reich, a Rhodes scholar that shares a lot of the same views as Bernie, who worked with Clinton to give us the lowest debt since Reagan.
Well, I mean, the lowest debt since Reagan is like, I don't know, the fewest concentration camps in Stalin.
How about none at all?
That's important as well.
Alright, let's move on to the next question.
Stephan, I think that's an F, it's supposed to be.
Stephan says that if you have an inheritance tax, all that will happen is that they will spend that money before they die and you'll lose it.
Stephan, you idiot.
You don't even understand.
Some so basic as if they spend it, the money goes back into the economy, stimulates demand, and the money becomes income to the stores, etc.
to get the money.
And they pay taxes off it.
Look up multiplier effect, you clueless actor.
Some, okay, look.
First of all, I mean, it's always funny to me when people claim that I'm an idiot while not being able to spell, use grammar, or write comprehensible sentences very well.
And I nitpick at these for sure.
And the reason I do that is because when people have bad grammar, bad spelling, and bad sentence construction, what it tells me is they haven't actually read that much.
I mean, I've read thousands of books over the course of my life, and you just pick up how you're supposed to communicate from that.
The words look wrong, the grammar looks wrong, and people who are able to pump out retarded non-grammatical Awkward, weird, confusing sentences and misspell basic things like my name.
They're just not literary people, not literate people.
They've not read that much, certainly haven't written that much, and certainly have never written for money.
And so I just wanted to point that out, that, you know, keep reading, keep working, and, you know, get a spell check and a grammar check.
It's really well worth it in terms of having your arguments be open and available to other people.
So yes, if you tax people on their inheritance, then they will tend to, A, accumulate less money.
What's the point of saving money if you're just going to get taxed on it?
It won't happen.
So they'll work less hard, they'll accumulate less money, they'll be less entrepreneurial.
This has actually been fairly well established.
We'll put the links to this below.
It's been fairly well established that people are less entrepreneurial, create fewer businesses, hire less, and so on, because they're going to be taxed so savagely, particularly In the U.S., which has one of the highest inheritance taxes in the world, which still only contributes a little bit over one percentage point to the U.S. federal budget.
And it's true.
Yeah, you know what?
People who go out and spend a lot of money, that stimulates a lot of economic activity.
No question.
Let's say that you're going to introduce a 75 percent inheritance tax.
And let's say, just for the sake of argument, that a bunch of people who've got money who are getting old decide to all go out and buy Lamborghinis.
Okay, well you've stimulated demand for Lamborghinis that otherwise wouldn't have been there.
And so what happens is entrepreneurs take this as a signal and they say, wow, we better start building a whole lot more Lamborghinis.
And people take capital that could have been used for other things.
They invest in Lamborghini factories and Lamborghini dealerships and Lamborghini maintenance and Lamborghini painting and Lamborghini accessories and so on.
And then it turns out that this is a short-lived phenomenon because of a one-time tax.
The permanent tax raise, but people are going to be no longer saving the money that they need to dump because of the tax raise.
And so the market for Lamborghinis collapses and all those people end up out of work and all that investment and time and effort is wasted and so on.
So it doesn't help.
Another thing too, and this is a larger picture thing.
So, like, I get it.
We all want kids to have the same opportunities.
And I'm working hard to do that by talking about non-spanking, peaceful parenting, negotiation with your kids and so on.
We would all love for kids to grow up, you know, loved and cherished with lots of parental time and investment and free from violence and aggression and so on.
And again, I'm doing my part as best as I can to help bring that about.
You can look at my YouTube channel for...
Peaceful parenting interviews with experts and tricks and tips and so on.
But the reality is that some kids grow up poor and some kids grow up being spanked or hit or beaten or raped.
And of course, you know, those who perform illegal acts against children should go to jail and pay the punishment.
But, you know, here in Canada, you can legally hit children as long as it's not in the face and only from the age of 2 to 12.
So, some parents don't spank, though.
Some parents teach their kids really good values.
Some people read to their kids.
I mean, some people...
Just do right by their kids.
Should they be stopped because other kids don't have those benefits?
No.
We should work to spread virtue as much as possible and as peacefully as possible.
So yes, it's true that some kids grow up with a lot more money than other kids.
And the only way to change that is to use the government to take people's money by force and usually use it to...
Use as collateral to borrow more money, which is going to end up with everyone in debt.
So it's not right to punish people who've worked hard and saved their money by taking that money away from them.
Even if we assume that there is some long-term emotional benefit, To being raised rich, I've known rich kids and poor kids.
Some of the rich kids have done well, some of the poor kids have done well, some of the rich kids have done really badly, and some of the poor kids have done really badly.
And the idea that you just get to shovel money around and solve these social problems is naive.
So if you say propose raising The inheritance tax significantly.
So, yeah, money that would have been saved will be consumed.
And what that means is that savings drive the economy.
One of the reasons that the US economy is doing so badly is that Americans don't save.
In fact, they borrow a lot because costs have gone up significantly, but income has remained relatively stagnant for the past two decades, probably generation, generation and a half, to be more precise.
For a variety of reasons that generally have to do with massive amounts of government control, regulation and intervention in the economy.
And so Americans don't save, which means there's less money available for entrepreneurs.
There's less money available to upgrade your capital equipment, to upgrade your factories, to drive worker productivity, because worker productivity is the only way to sustainably grow an economy in the long run.
Otherwise, you're just borrowing and printing money.
So if you say to people, we're going to tax your inheritance, they'll stop saving.
And yeah, you'll stimulate demand in the here and now, which of course will have negative effects on the environment.
You want to stimulate demand artificially.
As little as humanly possible, which is why money printing is so bad, because you don't want to harm the environment by overstimulating demand.
They won't save their money, and then investment and capital accumulation, which is the savings available to entrepreneurs to start jobs and so on, is really, really bad.
And when you save your money, you put it in a bank or whatever businesses can borrow and invest to build up capital.
And capital accumulation, one of the central keys to prosperity.
The more capital a society has, the more output can be created with it.
It's really sad that some people are born into negative circumstances, and the best thing we can do is encourage parents to do better and help out privately where possible, but the idea of just ripping the money out of hardworking parents is just not right.
I mean, the parents have property rights.
Just go around stripping them of property rights is crazy.
And you say, ah, you know, but the heirs don't deserve the inheritance because they did not earn it by themselves.
Okay, well, so if not earning something by yourself means that you shouldn't get to keep it, well, then how can the government take it from people by force This inheritance because the government sure as hell hasn't done anything to earn it by itself.
So that argument doesn't work at all.
And of course the tax that is used on inheritance is taxed on money that was formerly taxed.
So you're just double taxing, which is pretty unfair.
Standard, even if you accept taxation, which I don't, but even if you do, it's pretty unfair.
And of course, the richer you are, the more you'll find ways around the inheritance tax.
You'll put money in trusts.
You'll create charities and give to your charities and then put your kids in charge of those charities.
I mean, People want to take care of their kids.
It's shocking, I guess, but true, shocking to some.
People want to take care of their kids.
And so the inheritance tax is just going to fall on the poorer people and not on the richest people who just have lots of ways of getting around these things.
And there are pretty good studies that show the detrimental effects of inheritance taxes to entrepreneurial activity.
So there's evidence that entrepreneurs decrease business expansion if they're subject to estate tax after death.
I mean, why would you bother expanding your business?
A recent study shows that if you get rid of inheritance taxes, hiring decreases by 8.6%, payrolls by 2.6%, and investments by 3% in family.
Businesses.
And, I mean, is it enough?
Is it enough?
The top 1% in the US are paying more income taxes than the bottom 95%.
So, this stuff is just not fair at all.
So, I don't agree that inheritance tax is the way to go.
Whatever you want, the government to tax, just figure out how to reduce government spending and do that instead.
It will be much, much better.
And you'll find that people just won't have stuff to give you to do that anyway, right?
Like if you increase the inheritance tax, then people will just stop accumulating resources to be taxed and you won't end up with the tax and you won't end up with all the jobs that would have been created if you didn't have the extra tax and that's more loss.
It's just a net loss all around.
Next question.
No one is saying, free, stop spreading misinformation.
Bernie is saying healthcare and education should be a right for everyone, not just the rich.
It's like saying, we can't afford it.
Then looking at the F-22 Raptor program of $722 billion.
For grounded planes.
Look at the $79 billion spent on new tanks the general said they didn't need.
So we can't afford this stuff, you tell us.
You are a greed whore wanting to keep the Donald Trumps and Cokes of the world, suckling the world's tits forever.
Fuck them and fuck you.
There is plenty of money available.
It's just being sucked out of the ass from the defense budget, and we are in debt because we waged wars on credit cards, not cause of any social handouts, like you say.
We pay taxes.
Nothing is a handout.
At least give Americans something in return instead of debt and fear for endless war and defense.
You are a Republican Fox News talking point whore.
Okay.
So you complain that the government mismanages, wastes and spends a huge amount of money that people don't need.
These grounded planes.
I don't know if it's true.
I assume it's true.
And so they spend $700 billion plus on planes that are grounded and they buy tanks that nobody wants and they wage wars and do all these terrible things.
So we should give them less power, wouldn't you say?
Oh, the government is doing all these terrible things.
So let's give them more power.
And it's like, well, it's the same people who are going to be running your healthcare, going to be running your higher educational system.
I mean, they're the same people.
Just because Bernie gets in doesn't mean...
Are these people going to miraculously become efficient when given control over higher education or healthcare?
No.
And of course, yes, I agree, let's get rid of wasteful wars and so on.
Who would disagree with that?
The problem is that the current system has very little incentive to get rid of wasteful wars because it's a great way to distract the population, dumbed down from 12 years in government indoctrination camps known as public schools, It gets them distracted from domestic problems, focused on external enemies, and people making fortune out of war.
As the old saying goes, war is the health of the state.
And, as I've written an article which you can find at freedomain.blogspot.com, the state is the health of war.
This guy says, this guy is an idiot.
How much has America spent today on war?
Look at the thriving societies in Scandinavia.
He is giving you false information in democratic socialism.
The populace has the ultimate say in what happens with the money.
As long as you go out and vote, then you get the control of the money in the economy we have today.
The people in power who have the money keep their control of it.
And I mean, I've done some stuff on Scandinavia.
It's like the Elysium Fields.
It's like the Ragnarok of socialists that they just, oh, these Scandinavian countries are so great and so on.
But Scandinavian countries are much more capitalist than you think.
And they've actually really tried to pull back on the welfare state because it was sucking their economy into a giant black hole of Unproductivity and I've had experts on recently.
You can do a search for these on my channel.
It's kind of a myth that they're also socialist and so on.
So yeah, people in power tend to have control over things and the government is going to listen to people other than you and me when it comes to making decisions.
Another person wrote, Stefan, great video.
The only thing I have an issue with is healthcare.
Obviously, it should not be free.
But things are out of control.
I'm a healthy male, early 20s.
I work out and stay in shape.
I have a full-time job with good insurance coverage.
Recently, I went to the doctor and found out I need an allergy-related rescue inhaler.
With insurance, an inhaler would cost me $300 a month, $10 a puff.
I cannot fathom in any realm of reality that an inhaler is worth that kind of money.
That's a great question.
And healthcare costs in the United States are insane.
But the question is, why not just go out and compete with these people?
I mean, there's no way.
It should be that expensive.
So why not just go out and compete?
Why hasn't anyone gone out there and started competing based upon a lower price?
Because the government has about 6 million layers of bureaucracy and regulations and licensing and controls and monopolies and you name it.
They've got massive amounts of...
Regulatory barriers between the currently existing companies and anybody who wants to go out and start a new company to compete on them, on price.
So it is terrible, but it's because the government is too meddlesome, too controlling, too interfering, and because there's not enough free market competition to drive down prices.
And again, you can do a search on my channel.
I've had, hey, the doctor who gave me this scar came on and talked about a lot of the stuff that he's had to deal with.
And I, you know, Why do we need government licenses for doctors?
Like a third of Americans need licenses in order to do their jobs.
What a horrible burden that is on the poor.
Try and start a bank here in Canada.
See how much fun you're going to have.
At the turn of the last century, the problem with healthcare was it was just too cheap for the doctors.
They were really frustrated, so they went to the government and started all this licensing crap so that they could have a monopoly and raise rates.
Why do you have to go to a doctor to get a prescription?
Well, that only came in after the Second World War.
And again, it's just because doctors want you to come and see them, even though it's not particularly necessary for a lot of the prescriptions.
Anyway, so you just need more freedom and you'll get lower prices.
Moving on.
This man's either stupid or lying to a lot of people.
And it's clear he's not stupid.
Why, thank you.
He takes certain talking points that are heavily steeped in fallacy and turns them around in an attempt to psychologically prime his listeners to think that anyone who leans left of Rush Limbaugh is in effect a criminal.
You want taxes?
Why you want to put a gun to my head and take my money, man?
He plays on some of the worst stereotypes.
Painting poor people as lazy fat slobs who just want to stay where they are.
Society be damned.
And he goes on, but I keep writing on my channel.
It's not an argument.
And what's funny is that this guy complains that I play upon the worst stereotypes, and people are always trying to pigeonhole me into some category, you know, to the people on the right, because I criticize aggressive foreign policy,
I am viewed as left-wing, and because I criticize corporations as fictional state entities designed to have the rich be Excused from the results of their actions, in particular legally, and people think on the right that I'm on the left, and people on the left, because I criticize welfare and so on, think that I'm on the right.
You know, it's this bichromatic rainbow of rotating door, revolving door American political dichotomies.
It's ridiculous, right?
I'm a thinker.
I just work from a couple of basic principles.
Self-ownership, respect for property rights, and the non-initiation of force, the non-aggression principle.
Everything just flows from From that, and I've got lots of videos out there saying why that is the case.
But this guy is complaining that I'm pandering to stereotypes while creating this stereotype of me as some sort of right-wing guy.
And poor people as lazy fat slobs who just want to stay where they are, society be damned?
I certainly have never said anything of the kind, and that's what...
But people like to...
Say that sort of stuff because then they can push away what it is that I'm saying without having to evaluate it in any significant way.
But yeah, there are some poor who are lazy.
And there are some poor who are incredibly hardworking.
But the most important thing is that the poor are trapped in the welfare system.
I've just done a video on the welfare cliff.
We call it The Truth About Welfare.
You can find it on this channel.
But yeah, the government traps people in to the point where a single mom who's making 12 bucks an hour If she then ends up getting a raise to 18 bucks an hour, she loses a third of her total resources because the welfare state collapsed under her and she has to actually get to $38 an hour to make up for all of that loss.
Of course she's going to be trapped down there.
Of course.
I mean, this is what happens when you put the government in charge of complicated things like getting rid of poverty.
He continues to say, what's scary about this is how he spews all this crap with a smile.
Damn villain.
Just in the same way that piece of shit Milton Friedman did.
The last time enough people listened to these ideas, we got Ronald Reagan, who ruined the country.
I bet a lot of really stupid people on this channel think he's the holy grail of politics.
He is also very condescending towards non-science majors, despite being a philosophy guy himself.
Actually, a philosophy guy, I guess.
My degree is in history and my thesis, my master's thesis was on a topic in the history of philosophy.
The fact that, of course, I can be condescending to non-science majors.
I spent many years with them.
I know them intimately.
I shared classrooms with them.
I even taught.
I was never a TA, but helped some of them try to understand certain things that I was better at.
And so the idea that I've spent years and years and years around a certain type of person and then can't criticize them because I was in that same environment myself, I don't know.
Can you not talk about the ghetto if you've actually lived in the ghetto?
Of course you can.
And people who haven't lived in the ghetto probably have less valid opinions.
But yeah, so I just find that's kind of funny.
It never occurs to these types of people, I think that's me, that not all of us want to study science.
And don't fucking reply to me saying, you can study humanities if you want, but don't expect us to support your bad decisions.
Don't you fucking dare.
I pay a lot of taxes and I'm likely supporting your stupid ass.
But I know better.
We are a society and we're bound to our actions and to help and to be held to help each other.
And neither you nor I nor Stefan has the right to just opt out and say, fuck you, I'm not helping anyone but myself.
Doesn't work that way, bub.
Help each other is great.
I think it's wonderful to help each other.
I just think that we should not be roping in the awesome might and power and guns of the state to force income redistribution.
The initiation of violence is wrong and the state is founded upon the initiation of violence known as taxation or counterfeiting or borrowing and the money printing.
So helping each other is great but the moment you involve the state you're calling a date rape and there's not much romance left in that.
All right.
Here we go.
Hell, you get more and more stupid and fucked up over the years.
You are so full of shit.
Please stop making people more stupid.
You paid propagandist.
You again showed how little you actually know.
Full of logical fallacies, polemics, and unrelated nonsense.
Who is paying you?
Well, I'm a donation-based YouTuber, so I'm guessing not you.
Next, Bernie Sanders' bill to massively invest in infrastructure, employ millions of Americans, and rebuild our infrastructure was a great idea that has been done in the past, like the interstate highway system.
We spent several trillion dollars in Iraq and got nothing for it.
Money into infrastructure is an investment that pays for itself in increased productivity.
When people look at the detailed Bernie Sanders' ideas all make sense.
So, yes, this magic word, infrastructure, you know, building bridges and so on.
Yeah, American infrastructure is really, really in trouble.
Billions and billions and billions of dollars in deficit.
It has not been maintained.
It has not been repaired.
And it's tragic.
And that's what the government does when you give them control over stuff.
They like to build new stuff.
They don't like to repair old stuff because they like to cut ribbons.
They don't like to just say, hey, sewage system's still working.
And...
You know, the great temptation, of course, is how much money should be spent on infrastructure?
Is it better to build new stuff or maintain old stuff?
I actually gave a speech many years ago about the highway infrastructure system, which we'll put a link to below.
I think I gave it in Philadelphia at a conference, and it was horribly inefficient, and it's been a huge problem.
It was built, of course, as a way of getting the military around in case of a war.
And it's created a completely car-dependent culture.
I don't think it was the best use of everyone's time and money.
I don't know whether or not infrastructure should be spent.
How much money should we spend on infrastructure?
I don't know.
And nobody does.
Nobody does.
Take a limited amount of dollars in America.
What is the best way to allocate each one of those dollars?
There is no human being alive who knows.
Now, if it's your money, I assume that you're the only person who should be able to make decisions about your own money.
I shouldn't rip that money from you and go and buy you a gym membership because I think you should work it out.
You have to make your decisions based upon your own money.
Whether you want to save it, whether you want to spend it, whether you want to give it to someone to help them out, that's your decision to make.
It's not my decision to make for you.
And in the same way, it's true for me.
Now, I don't know.
How much money should be spent maintaining infrastructure?
I don't know if that infrastructure should all be torn down.
I don't know if we should invest in jetpacks instead.
I don't know if we should focus on teleportation.
I mean, this is silly, but nobody knows.
No human being knows how any individual dollar should be spent other than if it's your money, you can spend it yourself how you see fit.
And so I don't know whether investing in the infrastructure is better, or should we try and do something else?
If the highway system had not been built, we'd have a different kind of culture, and we'd certainly be using a lot less oil, be a lot less dependent on Middle Eastern death spots, have a lot less environmental destruction and predation going on.
Should we have built all that interstate highway?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
And nobody knows.
Not you, not me, not Bernie Sanders, no one.
So this great temptation of saying, oh, we should spend more on this and we should spend less on that, so let's get the government to pull money from here by force and push money over there by force, and nobody knows.
And this fundamental humility of saying, I don't know how this money should be spent.
We open it up to freedom.
We put all of these resources, stop taxing people for everything, put all these resources in the hands of self-interested and energetic entrepreneurs, and then they can charge us for stuff and we see if we really want it.
And that's how, it's the only way to know.
We know in hindsight, based upon what people did, we cannot know In advance from some central location.
Central planning is always a disaster.
It always destroys the economy.
It always wastes a near infinite amount of resources.
So the correct answer is, should we spend more on infrastructure and less?
I don't know.
I don't know.
You don't know.
And sure as sunrise, Bernie Sanders has no clue either.
You say the U.S. spends a trillion a year on welfare.
Steph, you must be including Social Security.
Social Security is not welfare.
People pay into it their whole lives.
It doesn't transfer money from the rich to the poor.
People pay into it, then withdraw from it.
No, they don't, say I. No, it's just not true.
It is welfare.
There's no money in Social Security.
All the money that you paid for in Social Security has been spent by the government on...
Stuff.
Whether that benefited you or not, I don't know.
But Social Security, the government takes a bunch of your money and then spends it providing some economic stimulus and services in the here and now, but there's no money in Social Security.
What happens is you put money into Social Security, the government takes it out and puts a bunch of dusty old IOUs in there.
So if the government had not been spending the money from Social Security, then your standard of living would be somewhat lower at the moment.
So it is welfare.
It's an insult to Ponzi schemes.
And what happens is when you retire, the government taxes the young to pay for your retirement, which is...
Wickedly unjust and unfair because older people have like a dozen times the resources and assets than younger people do.
So you're stealing from the poor to give to the relatively wealthy through Social Security.
It is a complete daylight robbery of the young.
And of course recipients take out far more than they ever paid into anyway.
Ida Mae Fuller retired in 1939.
She paid three years of payroll taxes.
She received monthly Social Security checks until she died at the age of 100 in 1975.
She collected almost $23,000 from Social Security benefits after having paid $24.75 into the system.
That's an extreme example.
But it is nonetheless complete and total welfare, except it's taxing the poor to pay for the relatively wealthier.
So these are some comments and some responses that I've come up with.
I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Thank you so much for your interest in the show.
Thank you so much for your comments and your curiosity.
And allowing me to get this golden George Hamilton hand basking in the radiation of your hatred.
But it's always interesting to read these comments.
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And if you don't, I promise to be thought-provoking anyway.
