1518: Big Tech On Trial, Excuse Me Professor, Was Jesus A Socialist? by Lawrence W. Reed

Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 151815.

And this will be my last episode before Meet the Masters tomorrow we have Flashback Friday, thankfully. Because, hey, I gotta get busy. I got a lot to do for this big event we're having. So we will do that and boy, I just recorded a fantastic 10th episode show and can't wait to share that one with you. Maybe we'll do that one on Monday. I've got some other 10th episode shows in the queue, so I'm not sure we'll do that one Monday, but boy, it's good. So if we don't do that on Monday, we'll do another great one. But I got another good one coming your way, definitely. Hey, so today we are going to talk about what is going on with these professors and socialism. Yes, it's a big deal for them, they like that stuff. But first let's talk about a little bit of capitalism, meaning free choice in the marketplace. And wow, people are making their free choice known, aren't they? They are voting with their feet. And again, the pandemic and the race riots, the civil unrest. Well, I don't want to call them race riots. That's not a proper term. That's what they seem to have started out as. Now they're just silliness. I mean, what are these people actually protesting? I bet you know some. I'm sure it's been done and I just haven't caught it on the news or something. But I'm sure one of these people with doing the person on the street interviews has walked up, these people with a microphone and said, hey, what are you protesting? And they're like, I don't know.

It'S unbelievable, just unbelievable. The world we live in is crazy, crazy, crazy. But this is an interesting study and I had the folks@apments.com on the show before I'LL have them back again, of course. And also I've quoted some articles where Redfin has been quoted and national association of Realtors and, you know, all these different sources that do a lot of surveying and release a lot of reports. And this one is fascinating. We're going to go into this one more. By no means am I going to do it justice today because there's a lot here. But it's interesting because it looks at the net inflow and outflow of various cities around the U.S. and once again, it has proven that. What is it proven? It has proven. It is proven that Jason Hartman is right. Yes. Over and over again. Right. About this stuff. And this is what's happening, folks. Watch this, watch this. You're gonna be prepared to be amazed. And again, I'm not gonna do it justice here, but I'll just give you a couple of examples off this list. So Charlotte, North Carolina, experienced an inflow in the second quarter of 2020. I'm going to round it off slightly by 20 people of 33 or 3400. 3400. A net inflow of 3400 people. Okay. Now, actually, this might be households. I'm not sure if it's people or households. That's one thing we gotta check. Okay. Because it doesn't say that. You know, some of these reports, they really do leave some ambiguities, and that's one of them anyway. So guess where those people came from. The top origin city was, you guessed it, New York. Charlotte has been called Halfback City. You know, we've helped people buy hundreds of properties in Charlotte over the years. And the top origin state is New York State. Okay, so that's interesting. Now, the median sales price, $289,000. And compare that to what you are getting out of in New York. If you're in New York City, you're probably leaving a place that was like a million five and going to a market where everything's $289,000 right as the median price. And that just shows to Goya, or goes to show you, depending on how you look at it, whether or not you're dyslexic or not. It shows to Goya that these people have a lot of spending power when they move to these suburban markets. That I, of course, was the first to predict that this would happen. And so the number one market, though that's only number 10 on this list, number one is Phoenix, Arizona, top origin city, Los Angeles, where I grew up. And that is 9428 is the net inflow. And again, I don't know if that's people or households in the second quarter. That's just one quarter. Just one quarter. Not the whole year, just a quarter. Second quarter of 2020, compared to last year, that inflow was already existing. As I've said many times, the pandemic has simply accelerated the process of creative destruction. I've talked to you many times about the economist Joseph Schumpeter and his concept of creative destruction. It's a great concept and it's what free markets and free people do very well. And it should happen. It needs to happen. It's a healthy thing. And unfortunately, the powers that be don't let it happen with these awful, disgusting, too big to fail companies. And sadly, I believe they will also not let it happen with the I'll call them. You know, I'm going to coin a new idea here. The too big to fail cities and too big to fail states like the Socialist Republic of California and even worse, the Socialist Republic of Los Angeles and San Francisco within California. So they're not going to let it happen. I mean, they're what, you know, look, at the end of the day, the market always wins. Just understand, the market always wins at the end of the day. But, you know, for a time you can postpone things, but, you know, gravity is overwhelming eventually. And so this is basically just a big list showing this mass migration trend, the 2020 Grapes of Wrath. Watch the movie, read the book. I read the book in 10th grade and the movie, or maybe that was 11th grade, I'm not sure it was one of those grades in there. And then I watched the movie a couple of weeks ago, as I told you. Oh, by the way, people are always asking me, jason, give me some movie and documentary or TV show recommendations or book recommendations. And I try to share those with you. But folks, I just can't remember. I'm so pooped out at the end of the day that I just want to lay on the couch and watch some stuff on my iPad. But one of them, I forget to tell you a lot of these things that I'm watching or reading or consuming or whatever. And that's why you need to join the Empowered Investor Network that we're going to talk about this weekend because then you're going to have much more direct access to some of this stuff where I'm getting a lot of this information I share with you. But one of them is a great video series I've talked. Remember how I talked to you about Edward Bernays, a not so known character throughout history, but someone who really, really changed the world or at least changed the United States very, very significantly. Edward Bernays being credited as the founder of Modern. Well, not really modern, because there were some people after him, obviously. And one I interviewed on the show, Al Reese, Al Rees and Jack Trout, I would call them the founders of modern advertising. But going back before them would be Edward Bernays, you know, decades before them. And Edward Bernays, fascinating character, for better or worse. I would say largely for worse. I think he really did a disservice to the world and to the country, to the U.S. in many, many ways. But he did uncover a lot of interesting things about the way we as consumers think and act and the way we spend our money. And there's just a fascinating series about him that you can watch on YouTube if they'll probably censor it soon. Oh boy, don't you love it that now this. I'm not going to take credit for this as a prediction because I did not actually predict it. I just said it needed to happen. And I've been saying it for many, many years now, and that is that the big tech companies be called to account for their disgusting deeds. And. And it happened yesterday. Folks, there's a great screenshot I am looking at right now of a, you know, essentially, I guess a zoom meeting of sorts. I'm not sure it's zoom technically, but it was on Twitter and it's entitled caption this and it's got Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook and, you know, all the tech tyrants. You know, I used to like Tim Cook. I'm done with Tim Cook. I think he's a jerk. So, you know, I used to say Apple was the. The most ethical of the big tech companies. And comparatively, I probably still say that I like Apple, but, you know, Tim Cook is really. He's gone off the rails, frankly. So sorry, Tim, I don't like you as much as I used to. I'm dumping you. Okay? And the others, I've already dumped them. But anyway, they've all got their right. They're all raising their right hand and swearing before they tell their lies. And believe me, they told many lies yesterday as they were. I believe they were all subpoenaed. I don't think they came voluntarily, but you know, Bezos and Zuckerberg and Sundar, you know, that's Google. Now Sundar used to be the other guy before that was named Eric. Anyway, I gave him enough hell over the years, but all of these people they're just tech tyrants. They're so abusive and they're just now begging to be regulated. Jeff Bezos is now in favor of raising the minimum wage because he, he just raised it under massive pressure and he knows that as soon as they raise the minimum wage as a fiat decree by government, then it'll put even a whole nother swath of his competitors, the mom and pop businesses that can't afford to compete, it'll put them out of business. So there'll be more consolidation and more abuse of power at the top at these tech companies. These companies are appalling. They need to be split up. Their algorithms need to be made public. Amazon should not be allowed to have its own product lines and compete against other sellers by having access to the data. It's just absolutely. This is so uncapitalistic. What is going on with these big tech companies? They're absolutely just disgusting, disgusting, disgusting. Their abuse of power. So fortunately, the government is finally taking them to task and let's hope that they. That we see some big changes because they have abused us like crazy and it, it has to end. So anyway, we'll get more into that study later, but we've got to get to our guests. But I do have one listener question that I just want to share real quickly. And I know we've got a whole stack of these. I'm sorry, we only have limited time. We can't get to all of them as quickly as we want to. But we will get to them. They are in the queue. So, Jason Fogel. Hey, Jason. Another Jason. That's a good name there. He says I will not be able to stream Meet the Masters Live. Is there any way to download the content afterwards? If so, how? And what is the cost? Thank you. Well, here's what I would say. And by the way, tickets are still selling like hotcakes today. Yesterday, we're only. Hey, the event is tomorrow. Thank you for buying your tickets so fast. Make sure you check your emails, because if you purchased a ticket late, you gotta read up on some of the emails. And we're also gonna be texting you some important things as well for the event. But what you can do, Jason, if you can only attend part of it, and you didn't say that, that wasn't your question. But someone might be thinking, Matt, well, you know, I can only attend part of it, so the best deal, frankly, is to just buy a ticket and then in the checkout, as you're checking out, buying your ticket, you can buy the recordings for only $97, that's a great deal. And then you can attend part of the event, you get in the Social network and all of that good stuff and you get the recordings. If not, we will offer the recordings later and they'll probably be, I don't know, 397 or something like that. That's sort of the typical price range for that kind of stuff. So either way you can get a hold of them. I'm just saying that it might actually be a better deal to just buy a ticket because you get all the other stuff with it. But it's up to you. We will definitely offer the recordings as a solo thing later. Okay. So hope that helps. And oh gosh, we got a bunch of listener questions. Oh, I do want to share one funny one with you. One of our attendees, Mike Weller, sent me this yesterday. He says this was after I sent him the link for the event because I guess he didn't get it or something. He says, thanks, Jason, I received the link. I thought you would find this link, little backstory amusing. And this is pretty amusing. He says, I'm an agent here in Orange county, your Belinda area. But I didn't grow up here in California. I met my wife and then we both lived in Las Vegas in the mid 2000s and we moved back to California, Orange county in 2008 after we got married. My wife grew up in Irvine. Okay. Where my mother in law still lives. In your old farm area. Now a farm area is where realtors make it a point to really get to know everybody in the neighborhood and get a lot of business there. And I had several farm areas and just made a ton of money in my farm areas because hey, I was popular. I was the number one agent in those areas and got lots of business out of them. So one of my old farm areas here that he's talking about is a place called Northwood Villas. Okay, so this is the funny part. He says when I was first getting into real estate here, her reference meaning his mother in law was always, you should be like Jason Hartman. You should be like Jason Hartman. He used to come around and bring salt shakers with his face on it. Now let me just explain that one. I had this idea when I was very young in my real estate career that, you know, I could package those salt canisters. They're like 26 ounces I think. And you know, back in the day, and now this is a sign of inflation, by the way. I got to check the price of salt. Okay, I haven't checked that in, you know, decades, right, Since I did this, these were only like 29 cents. And you know, the point of a salt, not a shaker, a salt canister, the one that sits in your pantry, is that it stays there forever for years and years and years. It's really cheap to buy, it's heavy. And, you know, you can do all kinds of funny things with it. You can say you could put a label on it like I did, that says a realtor worth his salt. And I thought of, by the way, here's a marketing idea for you, Mike, maybe your mother in law will like this one. I thought of doing like a whole little booklet that would go with it, a little pamphlet modeling it after the pet rock. And if you don't know about the pet rock, that's about the most amazing marketing story ever where a guy made millions of dollars selling rocks. I kid you not, look it up. I'm sure there's something out there on it. This was in the 70s. It was called the Pet Rock. And the cute thing about it was he had a little instruction manual about all the things your pet rock could do for you. And it was really funny. So look that up. But I thought about doing that with salt. You know, you can ward away evil spirits by throwing the salt over your shoulder. You can keep the snails out of your garden by putting salt around the border of the border of your garden. You can season your. You can do all kinds of things with salt, right? And so anyway, this was just a really inexpensive thing that basically I bought these by the thousands over the years. I did this promotion many times and then passed them out in my farm area. And everybody remembered it. Okay, so he says, you should be more like Jason Hartman. He used to come around and bring salt shakers with his face on it. By the way, I've still got one of those. Anyways, she has a funny old whiteboard of yours on her refrigerator still. That was another thing that I did. I made these whiteboards and, you know, I figured they had magnets on them when people used to put stuff on their fridge. It's not so common nowadays. Anyway, so that was a good promotion too. So she still has it. I asked him to send me a picture. Mike Weller, send me a picture of this whiteboard. I want to see it. She lives in Northwood Villas on Cartier Isle. And I used to live there too, on the same street. So when I discovered your investing podcast about four years ago, you had a nice lead in. I thought that was a great story. So. So Anyway, thanks, Mike, for sharing that with me and I really appreciate it. Let's get to our guest and let's talk about what's going on in these universities and the massive amount of brainwashing and the world has discovered thanks to Covid. Okay. There are some, definitely some good things coming out of this that the emperor has no clothes. And by the way, if you're thinking of investing in real estate in college towns, caution, caution, caution, be very careful. You may want to rethink that one. And we'll talk about that on a future episode because there are big, big changes coming to college towns. Okay, without further ado, let's get to our guest. Remember that link if you want to join us, starting tomorrow night and all weekend this weekend, it's jasonhartman.com masters. We'd love to see you there. Jason hartman.commasters and here is our guest.

It's my pleasure to welcome Lawrence W. Reed. He is the former president of the foundation for Economic Education, former president of the Mackinaw center for Public Policy, editor of the best selling book, excuse me, Professor, Challenging the Myths of Progressivism, the author of a pamphlet entitled Great Myths of the Great Depression. Maybe we should talk about that one a little bit today too. I think it's fitting for the times, but the new book was Jesus A. Why this question is being asked again and why the answer is almost always wrong. Lawrence, welcome. How are you?

Hey, just terrific, Jason. Thanks for having me again. I appreciate it.

It's good to have you. Good to have you. So socialism, what is socialism? I think there is quite a bit of confusion about this word that is thrown around quite a bit, right?

That's right. There's even confusion among socialists themselves. There was a time decades ago when it was pretty exclusively thought to mean government ownership of the means of production. But everywhere that was tried, particularly in the communist world, it proved to be such a flop that even many socialists say, well, we don't quite mean that. Let's focus on something else. And so sometimes by socialism they mean a welfare state. Other times they mean central planning of the economy by a handful of elites or some combination thereof. But whatever definition you employ, it all comes down to a single word, and that is force, the use of force. Socialism in every variety is not a list of recommendations or suggestions for the comment box. They are proposals to mandate or impose rules and regulations and sky high taxes on other people. And the motivations, of course, do vary. Some people just like the government in charge and don't care much about what the Outcome is others think that government is the best way to deal with things like poverty. So many times socialists are very well meaning, but they are woefully in error when they suggest that it's either a workable system or a productive system or one that Jesus Christ would have somehow supported.

Yeah. So the distinction between socialism and communism, though, socialism is not ownership of the means of production per se. That would be communism. Socialism would be something sort of the less ugly little brother of communism. That's the way I like to put it. But you know, the left always cites these examples of the Scandinavian paradise. Right. And we've debunked that myth many times on the show. So maybe we don't need to go into that too much. But what's the difference between socialism and communism?

Well, if you go back to Karl Marx, who really was the modern godfather of both systems in his way of looking at things, he said, well, socialism is sort of a way station along the way to the end of history, which would be communism worldwide. And by his way of thinking, socialism would be characterized by a dictatorship of the proletariat or the working class, as he put it. And it would involve ownership by government of the means of production, the abolition of private property. And then communism, he thought, would someday sort of magically appear as a utopia of share and share alike and everybody getting pretty much the same from the production of the economy. And at that point, under communism, he said that government itself would wither away. It wouldn't be one at all, which is really absurd. I mean, can you imagine people who accumulate such power under socialism to be in charge of almost every aspect of life and at some point saying to everybody, well, we're out of here. We're just going to walk away from all this power that we have. He never explained how that was to happen. And of course it's a fanciful delusion from the word go.

So one of the things we hear from supporters of these ideas are, well, two things we hear from them in addition to the Scandinavian myth that I mentioned is, number one, the former Civilization, Union and other communist countries were not Marxist. They didn't actually follow Marx's writings. And I kind of agree with that. If you read Das Kapital, which is pretty complex stuff, but Marx, they didn't really do what he said. It just became a big power grab. And communism, socialism, big government in any form is great for these insiders. The cognoscente love it. I mean, you know, who doesn't love power and wealth and money? And it's all, you know, do what I say, not what I do. Right. You know, they're not living in a commune. So that's one thing, but the other element of it is that it's just generally never been done. Right. You know, like back to the Clintons say, you know, the criminals when they were in the White House there always this idea was, well, you know, I know it's been tried before, but they just did it wrong. You know, we can do it better, we can do it right. You know, Obama would have said that. And listen, I'm not giving the Republicans a pass either because the Republicans are just modern Democrats, that's all. They're all big spenders, they're all big government. You know, that's, I'm not actually being partisan here when I say this, but the Democrats lean more in that direction.

So this is one of the many problems with socialists. They never own up to their, the outcomes of their own handiwork. Can you imagine if somebody said of the Hitler or Mussolini regimes that, well, that wasn't true fascism? Maybe we'll get it right the next time. In every case, what is attempted as socialism or full blown communism does result in havoc and destruction and all the logical predictable outcomes you would expect when you concentrate power. At some point, social socialists have to ask themselves, maybe there's something wrong with the theory if we try it hundreds of different times with hundreds and thousands of different people and it always ends up in disaster. At some point they have to go back to the ivory tower theoretical concepts and recognize that they're flawed from the start and all of these disasters were entirely predictable.

So you're saying they have done it right?

Well, they've carried socialism to its logical conclusions in each case. And what these socialists often say was wrong was that, well, they shouldn't have used so much force, they shouldn't have bloodied up people, they shouldn't have confiscated all this stuff. Well, that's what people do when you give them massive power. Socialists do not yet recognize the eternal truth of what Lord Acton famously told us, and that is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what they need to do is jettison the theory and quit trying to make an unworkable delusion somehow work.

Okay, so when we look at this in a religious context, or really a historical context, it's not a religious context at all, actually. But we'll use a religious figure as an example because a lot of people would say that this particular party was charitable, he was a redistributionist, he didn't like the Money Changers. And you know who I'm going to say? It's Jesus. Right?

Yeah.

So wasn't he a socialist?

No, not at all. In fact, I don't think the terms socialist or even capitalist apply because, you know, they didn't even exist for another 1800 years after Jesus crucifixion.

Right, but just because the word wasn't invented doesn't mean the concept didn't occur. Right?

Steer clear using those terms simply because it would tend then to define Jesus in a way that shortchanges who he was and what he really had to say. The question is, would Jesus have supported or did he support the ethics of a socialist system such as forcible redistribution or central planning or government ownership of the means of production? There's nothing in any of his words in the entire New Testament that would suggest that he was endorsing any of those things. He was interested in what was going on in your heart. He never once advocated the use of political force or concentrated power to rob Peter and pay Paul. And he cautioned in his parables and other teachings against the worship of wealth. You're right. You mentioned a moment ago that he drove the Money Changers from the temple, but you know, he never drove one from a bank or a marketplace. He drove them from God's house. It was an inappropriate venue for what they were doing. For the same reason if you showed up at a funeral with a kazoo and started playing Happy Days are Here again, there's good people who may love kazoos who are going to ask you to leave.

Right, okay. That's a good clarification on that. So was he. I mean, there's a difference between charity and government forced redistribution of resources. So you would say that Jesus was charitable, right?

Oh, yes. And he encouraged charity. He encouraged people from their own resources and through their own free will to help others around them who may have needs. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The man who was walking along the road came upon another who was beaten and robbed. And what did the Good Samaritan do? He chose to help the man with his own resources and of his own free choice. If he had said to the man, oh, well, there must be a government program for you, or hey, see you later, just contact your social worker. We would not know him today as the Good Samaritan. We would probably think of him as the good for nothing Samaritan.

So what can Scripture teach us about investing, about money, about business?

Well, first of all, I think the notion of Magnifying wealth, of increasing the wealth of society and doing it because that's the way you personally can get ahead by serving others. Producing things of value is very much endorsed by the words of Jesus and the New Testament. In his parable of the talents, he tells the story of three men. Another man is leaving his estate state for a time and he entrusts these three men with a portion of his wealth. By the way, the initial distribution was not equal for the egalitarians in the audience. And later the man comes back to find out what happened to the wealth that he entrusted these guys with. And as Jesus tells the story, the first man says, oh, I have no more than what you gave me. I kept it safe, I buried it in the backyard. Jesus ridicules him. He says what? In so many words, he says, you didn't magnify it in any way. Well, that's terrible. The second guy says, oh, you'll be happy with me. I doubled or tripled it because I invested it. And he gets praise. And the third guy who says, I did even better than that. He gets the most praise from Jesus in this parable, who then goes on to say, I'm going to take the money from the first guy and give it to this third guy because he knows how to invest and how to be an entrepreneur.

So scripture would want you to manage resources well and to increase them.

That's right. That's part of our calling, to be good stewards of creation. There's nothing in the words of Jesus that says he was interested in dividing up a shrinking pie. He was interested in baking a bigger one. I've heard people say, well, what about the loaves and the fishes when he fed farms?

I was just going to ask you that.

Well, somehow that's sometimes thought of as a case for socialism. Well, as the Bible records, he turned to Philip, one of his disciples, and said, where are we going to buy the food that we need to feed these people? And the next verse actually says, Jesus actually knew what he was going to do. He was just testing Philip. Well then he did what he was going to do, which he didn't say to the disciples. There's a rich community nearby or a grocery store. Why don't you guys go raid those places and bring as much of the loot over here so we can feed this crowd. Instead he used his.

So he wouldn't have endorsed setting up Chaz or Chop or whatever. It's. Well, I guess it's non existent now.

But used his own unique power to magnify wealth without pilfering a crumb from anybody.

Right. Talk to us a little bit about the Great Depression. You're a student of that. You say that there are some big myths that have come out of the Great Depression. And I would have liked to talk to you about this 12 years ago during the Great Recession. But now we're in pretty strange times again and there's so much government and central bank intervention, it's just sort of hard to know what's going to happen in terms of the overall picture. But I do know in some micro things exactly what's going to happen. And a lot of my predictions are already coming true. But yeah, what can we learn from the Great Depression and what were some of the myths? And by the way, I should mention last night, interestingly, I just watched the Grapes of Wrath movie. So I just watched it last night. I read that book in high school as part of English lit and it was interesting to watch it last night. I can see why you have the.

Great Depression on your mind.

Yep, I do.

Well, there are so many lessons to be learned from the experience of the 1920s and 30s and they usually are just the opposite of what most kids are taught in high school these days. They're taught typically that well, it was the free market or capitalism that failed us, the stock market that sunk us all and dragged the economy into depression. And then Franklin Roosevelt saved us with all of his various.

Socialistic type interventions. Just the opposite is actually the case. The culprit in the start of the depression was actually the Federal Reserve just as it was the culprit in the start of the 2008, 2009 recession. You had a period in the 20s of about five years of massive expansion of money and credit. Dirt cheap interest rates giving rise to the so called Roaring twenties. It was a bubble that was fostered by this easy money that the Fed was cranking out. And then in late 28, early 29, the Fed reversed itself, began jacking up interest rates. It did that dramatically for the next almost three years. And it pricked the balloon and we collapsed into a recession first. But by the middle of 1930, months after the big stock crash in the fall of 29, we still didn't have a depression yet. We only had a recession with unemployment less than 9% and the stock market had regained half of the ground it had lost since the collapse the previous fall. What took us from a recession into a depression in the middle of 1930 was the smooth Hawley Tariff in which President Herbert Hoover and the Republican Congress, with the support of some Democrats, raised tariffs to an all time high and virtually closed the borders. It ignited a worldwide trade war. Prices plummeted, markets dried up. Farmers in particular were hurt because so much of what they produced was being sold overseas. And then two years later, Hoover, still in the White House. Before Franklin Roosevelt was elected, they doubled the income tax. They raised the top rate from 24 to 65% in one fell swoop, which took a depression and made it an even deeper one. And in Roosevelt. Roosevelt came in March of 33 with his own bag of tricks, ending up prolonging the depression by another seven years with all the interventions that he imposed, including hikes and taxes and destruction of crops and cattle and price controls on American industry.

Okay, so you're critical of Roosevelt, but was he really that bad? I mean, compared to today, today his government programs, those were make work programs, or at least the gist of it. And the key word there is work. For the past 60 years, maybe or 50, we've been paying people to stay at home and do nothing but watch tv. I mean, it's pathetic what we've got now. So I don't know, Roosevelt looks like the guy that had the right idea to me. I mean, listen, if we're going to do, you know, government handouts, let's at least build some highways or something, right?

Well, yeah, that's better than just paying people to do nothing most of the time. And so in that sense, yeah, you can say FDR wasn't. Programs weren't maybe as bad as some that we have today. But those programs were at best short term lifelines for a lot of people. And they really didn't stimulate recovery from a depressed economy in some respects. They actually, because of the spending and the higher taxes and the borrowing that they required, they actually prevented the kind of adjustment that could have ended the depression in a year or two. But he did a lot of direct harm too. He actually, when he ran in 1932, he ran against Hoover for, among other things, raising taxes. But then once he got elected, he raised them even higher. And at one point Roosevelt proposed a 100% income tax rate on all incomes over $25,000. And he imposed by executive order until Congress rescinded it.

I mean, what could have possibly been that? I mean, so that was based on a tax schedule obviously, right? Not Everybody would pay 100% income tax.

No. And it was only on incomes over 25,000, which in today's dollars might be 10 times that. But he wanted every penny of what you earned over that amount.

So I guess his. I mean, how could you even float an argument like that? That's so absurd. What was his argument? That, well, these people that are making over $25,000 a year already have so much money stashed away they can just live on that?

Yeah, he had for the better part of three full terms in office, he had a constant stream of invectives aimed at wealthy people, even though he was one himself. So he appealed to the very left wing of his own party, which today wouldn't find that very radical at all. So, you know, and I think too the really left wing socialist type of Democrat that FDR was appealing to at the time, they don't really care what the economic effect is of swiping as much as you can get from wealthy people. I think they'd be for it even if the government took the money and dumped it into the Pacific because it's more appealing to them to punish somebody. They get excited about, you know, wringing the necks of the rich people than they do actually helping others with the money. They ste. That says something about their core ethics and what's really going on in their heart and the envy that I think has shaped their political mentality. It's a shame, but that's what Roosevelt was appealing to.

Sure. Well, you know, as Obama said, you didn't build that.

Yeah, that's just another version of it. What did Obama ever build? Nothing. Yet. He tells entrepreneurs who risk everything and endure all the hassles that come their way from government, and he tells them, you didn't build that. Somebody else did. It's ridiculous.

Very interesting. Well, Lawrence, wrap it up for us with just any closing comments and give out your website.

Okay. I'll just say, Jason, that no society that has ever lost its character has kept its liberty. We didn't talk much about character today, but I think you would probably agree that it's pretty important stuff. And that's what concerns me these days more than anything else. When a people begin to lose their respect for the lives and property and the choices of others, when they expect government to do what they should be doing themselves, when they are no longer intellectually humble or patient or honest or courageous, they're putty in the hands of would be tyrants. And that's the way so many places have lost their lives.

Actually, let me throw one more in there for you that is just really disconcerting. Starting today, there seems to be a complete lack. Well, two things. Where do I start? Number one, total lack of understanding of history and number two, a complete lack of critical thinking skills. Yes, it is shocking to me how there's just no critical thinking skill anymore. I mean, you see it all the time on social media. It's really scary, but well said.

It's everywhere and it'll be the death of the country if that doesn't turn around. So you can't expect government which educates 90% of the of American K12 children. You can't expect the government to teach either liberty or character. It never does, never has. So my website for those who are interested is Lawrence. That's spelled with a W. L A W R E N C E Middle initial W. Last name reed r double ed lawrencewreid.com or you could visit our organization's website, feefee.org Excellent Lawrence.

Thanks so much for joining us.

My pleasure. Thank you. Jason.

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