1582: Getting America Back to Work, The Capitalist Comeback by Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants Hardee's & Carl's Jr

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 1582. 1,500, 582. And thank you for joining us today. So the trend is continuing, accelerating, expanding, whatever you want to call it. Now, let's talk about the uk. Let's talk about the country that gained its independence recently. Yes, through Brexit. And of course it is the same country we gained our independence from here in the good old US of A back in 1770. That was a while back, wasn't it? But real estate investors there are doing something interesting and I thought it was worth sharing this with you. And this might be too extreme, but it's just interesting to note. I'm looking at an article and it's in a UK publication and it is talking about how landlords are buying outside of the cities. And just wait for it, because it's a little more significant than you might think. Here we go. Property investors are increasingly looking to buy outside of cities in the countryside and coastal town centers. Research from business and landlord insurance provider Simply business has found 1 in 10 landlords now plan to purchase properties compared to just 3%. So that's 10%. Why are they jumping around like that, folks? Come on, just say 10% of landlords now plan to purchase properties compared to just 3% at the end of last year. So more people are investing or planning to invest, I guess I should say. Right, so that's the macro trend. But then the question is, where are they wanting to invest? So here we go. At the end of the year. End of last year, right? 2019, the world was very different, right? At the end of 2019, a third of residential landlords already believed properties in city centers no longer represent a worthwhile investment. Okay, so probably that was simply because they were just too expensive. And they have linear, cyclical and hybrid markets just like we do. Even though they have that cool British accent, right? They have the same kind of markets we do. So if you look at London, for example, that would be a cyclical market. Highly overpriced, way too expensive. And they drive on the wrong side of the street. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And the food isn't that good, but it's still a super cool, cool city, right? Great place to visit. Wouldn't want to invest there. Kind of like, say, in California. Great place to visit. I wouldn't want to live there. And by the way, heart goes out to our California friends. I know these areas very well, affected by these wildfires, and it is just absolutely crazy what's going on there. So I just wish everybody the best with that. I remember one time when I lived in the Turtle Rock area, I had to evacuate my house and the fires were getting close, and I went and stayed at my mom's house that was up in Anaheim Hills at the time. When I woke up in the morning after finally getting to sleep at her place, I thought, I wonder if my house will be there or if it would have burnt down. And, you know, I put everything in the car I could. A couple friends came by with their cars and vans and I loaded up some of my stuff in their cars and vans and they took it home. And, you know, I took stuff in my car and just wish for the best, kept my fingers crossed that my house would be there in the morning. And it was. Let me tell you, coming back to that house in the morning was a surreal experience. It was like being on Mars. The sky was so orange and there was soot and ash all over the plants and the concrete outside and everything. And fortunately the firefighters were able to keep the flames away. But there are definitely a lot of people that are going to be affected by this one because it's big and frankly, I don't know the details. Had time to keep up on it. Whenever you have these kind of things, they're always tough, especially in an area where, you know, people and you see in the news that the street names that they're mentioning, and it's like, I know where that is. You know, I used to live there. And then, you know, hurricanes and, you know, in Louisiana, natural disasters everywhere. So it's just. It's a crazy time. But I'll tell you something, California, the government is largely to blame for a lot of this stuff because they hinder development, they don't manage the forestry, and.

It'S just a crazy mess what's going on there. Anyway, best of Luck to everybody affected. So back to this linear cyclical hybrid markets all around the world. That applies everywhere. And London would be an overpriced place to invest, but outside there are more linear markets. That's fine. But get this. It says the lockdown may have pushed up renter and homeowner demand in greener towns and villages. Figures from rightmove are also revealing that property searches have doubled for homes in small towns and villages with. Wait for it, folks. This is the amazing thing. With populations under 11,000 people now, I wouldn't go that far, okay?

I have talked about, recommended, predicted that people would definitely move to suburban markets and even rural markets. But under 11,000 people, I don't think you could function very well as a landlord in that kind of market. Part of the problem, of course, is finding a team people to do maintenance work. A property manager, if you want to have a property manager. There just wouldn't be enough resources in a place like that. The same goes in foreign countries when a lot of people consider international investing. The same is true with those markets because there's just not enough resources in many of these markets. Now, let's look at one more thing. And by the way, our guest today is going to be talking about putting America back to work. Putting America back to work. And I think this will be an interesting guest. And you know, he has some political thoughts about it, too. And hey, since we got an election right around the corner, not even around the corner, like just a few days away, you know, I thought this would be an appropriate guest for today. And after next week, you know, this stuff will all be cemented and it'll be, you know, we will have what we have, whatever it happens to be. But I wanted to share with you a Zillow research report that was pretty fascinating, if not disconcerting. And here's why. It's entitled Financial Anxiety. Ongoing Uncertainty is Keeping Sellers on the sideline. See, one of the reasons. There are many reasons we have this severe inventory shortage right now, but one of them is simply that the home is the center of the universe, as I've said and really predicted back in February. And that is making people fear giving it up. So, as we know and have talked about on prior episodes, people just a part of human psychology that comes from the old world, the old world we lived in throughout history that had scarce resources. Unlike the world today, where people would really cling to those resources, they would do a lot more to protect what they have than they would to seek the opportunity to gain something new and as such, that's the way people are being with their homes now. They don't want to let them go. So this article says about a third of homeowners who are considering selling in the next three years cite life being too uncertain right now and financial uncertainty as reasons they aren't selling. Nearly 40% of those potential sellers say they anticipate higher sales prices if they wait. By the way, they're right, okay? At least for the foreseeable future. There are certainly cross currents. There are certainly weird things going on in the economy, in the world, and unemployment and so forth. But as I have shown you, the bubble fear is just, at least from the major home buying consideration perspective is just largely unfounded. It really is. So there's a chart here, and this chart says that it basically shows all homeowners and what they think, their answers to survey questions. And then separated from that is the homeowner's considering selling in the next three years. So maybe as a part of life planning. Right. And so here's the top response. Well, the second to the top response. And the people consider selling and in all categories for all homeowners, okay? And here's what the seller said. They were concerned that they wouldn't be able to find and or afford a new home. So of all homeowners, 26% of the people that was the highest in this survey said that that's the reason they wouldn't sell their home. In other words, they wanted to keep what they have, protect what they have, because they were concerned that if they give it up in order to go search for a new one, they'd be left out in the cold. Now, of the people considering selling in the next three years, that's the people that maybe for a life reason, they're thinking, we gotta plan on a move here in the next couple of years.

1% of those cited that as the reason that they had concern that they wouldn't be able to find and or afford a new house. Now, the next question was life is too uncertain or the next statement. I should say the next statement, life is too uncertain for me and. Or my household. Of all homeowners, 22% said that was the reason they wouldn't sell. And of the people wanting to sell in the next three years, 30. A whopping 34%. Okay, now one more. There's a whole bunch of things here, but I'm not going to go through them all, but let me give you one more. Okay? So here was the next statement. I anticipate speaking as a Seller, I anticipate a more favorable sales price if I wait. In other words, they think prices are going to go up. So why would they sell now if they can just wait and get a higher price later? That's how they viewed the situation. Of all homeowners, 21% said that. But of the people wanting to sell within the next three years, a whopping 39% said that was the reason they would wait. Now, others were saying they're planning a renovation. Other things about COVID and so forth, like they didn't want to show their home and have strangers coming through their house to look at it and bringing in germs and viruses and stuff like that. Right. And just a very small number said their home is in forbearance and my mortgage payments are paused, so why do anything? I'll just sit back and I got a free house, right? So why would I sell? So I just thought that was kind of interesting. Now, another interesting part about the survey is that younger homeowners said they were more likely to do renovations. Now, I don't know if that just means that they're, you know, watching videos on YouTube or watching home improvement shows and, you know, they're just maybe more ambitious about taking on a home improvement project. Not sure. But Gen Z and millennials who are homeowners, which is a fairly small number, but the ones that are, 35% of them said, you know, we don't need to sell, we're just going to improve our house. Gen x, my generation, 21% of them said that. And then for the boomers and the silent generation, only 14% said they were just going to do a renovation instead of moving. So this is what people are thinking out there. This is what's happening. And just one more interesting component here. And then we will get to our guest homeowners most likely to put but refinance proceeds towards debt and savings. 54% of people said they would refi their house and not sell it. They would just refinance, pull cash out and pay off debt. Okay. 50% said they would use the refinance proceeds to save for retirement. Now, you know my strategy that I've been teaching for what, 16 years now, refi till you die. 50% said home improvements, they would refi get cash out and use it to improve their home. 41% said pay living expenses. 33% said they'd invest with the money. And the categories for investment were stocks, bonds, or a secondary property. Get the other property, folks. I'm telling you, that's the best deal. That's the refi TDI plan. Right? There you go. I thought that was kind of interesting. So anyway, I hope that's insightful for you and let's go to our guest and talk about getting back to work and how to get the economy back to work and booming again. So here we go.

It's my pleasure to welcome Andrew Puzder to the show. He is the former CEO of CKE restaurants. If you are not familiar with him, they are the parent company for Hardee's and Carl's Jr. Certainly you're familiar with those big brands. He's the former nominee for secretary of labor under President Trump, the number one best selling author of job creation, how it really Works and why Government Doesn't Understand it and the capitalist comeback, the Trump boom and the left's plot to stop it. Getting America back to work. And it's time to let America work again. Andy, welcome. How are you? Great.

Jason. Good to be here. Thank you.

It's good to have you. And you're coming to us from your summer location, which is Northern Michigan, right.

Up in Northern Michigan, up on Traverse Bay off of Lake Michigan.

Yeah, yeah.

Nice and cool in the summer.

Beautiful area for sure. Beautiful area. Well, hey, you know, there has been much talk and it's become an obvious political football. These quarantines and lockdowns and it seems like everything is a political football nowadays. Even, you know, if someone tells me whether or not they believe in hydroxychloroquine, I can tell you who they're going to vote for. It's absolutely an almost ridiculous world we're living in, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

Talk to us about the thesis of your short and easy to get through book about getting America back to work or letting America go back to work.

Yeah, it's a pamphlet encounter books, calls and broadsides which it lays out the arguments for why we should let Americans get back to work. We should start getting life back to normal. We had the Democrats, they've been very open about this. They said from the beginning they viewed pandemic as a means to enact their agenda. Even Joe Biden made a comment. This is an opportunity to remake America. Well, we really don't need to remake America. We've come through the worst of the pandemic. In fact, there was a, a declaration is called the Barrington Declaration came out by. It was written by three virologists, so virus experts. One from Harvard, one from Stanford, one from Oxford and it's been signed on to by over 6,600 medical professionals and over 14,000 medical practitioners. And it says, look, these lockdowns are a bad idea. They hurt people, they hurt poor people. They cause more harm than they do good. The World Health Organization just came out last week and said the same things. Don't lock your economies down. We're creating starvation across the world. We're really doing great harm to people. This is not helping. People aren't getting the medical care that they need. And you know, the CDC came out about two weeks ago and said survivability rates, you know, I'll tell you quickly, I don't want to bury in numbers, but if you're from birth to 19, your chances of surviving Covid if you get it, are 99.997%. If you're between the ages of 20 and 49, it's 99.8%. And if you're between 40 and 69, it's 99.5%. It only drops to 94.6% if you're over 70.

Right.

So the survivability rate on this is very high. We didn't lock the economy down to prevent people from getting sick. We locked it down to prevent people from dying. And with the therapeutics we've got, as President Trump demonstrated, it's time to let people get back out there.

And not only that, it's also about the health of the patient and if they have comorbidity factors and all kinds of things. I mean, there are so many ways to lie with statistics. And, you know, this is being used as just such a, such a football to enact all sorts of agendas. But I'll tell you, you alluded to it and, you know, various people in the media, and Trump has alluded to it too, of course, they don't seem to be doing a great job of really explaining. You know, I like to talk, Andy, a lot on the show about how you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. And, you know, you may flatten the curve with a lockdown or maybe that's debatable. But let's not even debate that. You know, there are other problems created by lockdowns. Depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, all sorts of domestic violence issues. People should not be locked down for many reasons, not just it would be very myopic to simply look at the COVID infection rate because there are all these knock on problems that occur with these lockdowns, aren't there?

Yes, there are. There actually were two medical foundations that came out as early as May and said we're dealing with an epidemic within the pandemic. And the epidemic was suicides, drug addiction, alcoholism, as you said, domestic abuse, real problems, people not getting the medical care they need.

Right.

You know, mammograms, people aren't going into getting mammograms, which is going to lead to breast cancer in women. So there's a lot of contravailing factors here and lockdowns are not the answer. They do, you do level the curve. But I think what we're finding is that once you, if you don't let the thing run its course, as they did in Sweden and as happened in New York, that doesn't mean you shouldn't protect the vulnerable. Look, and I don't mean to demean anybody's loss of life or their suffering, of course, but we gotta protect the people that are vulnerable. But if you look at New York and Sweden, you know, there's really nobody dying from this disease. There are very, very few people. They've gotten this kind of under control and they didn't do the lockdowns. And this is why the World Health Organization and virologists and the CDC have all come up with evidence showing that these lockdowns really are not good long term solutions to this problem. And even if you look, you just look at the unemployment rate, you talked about it being political. So in August, which is the most recent month for which we have the state unemployment rates, there were 10 states that had 6% or lower unemployment. Nine of them were Republican governors and one of them had a Democrat governor. That was Montana, which is a conservative state. If you look at the worst unemployment rates, there were 10 states that had over 10% unemployment, including new York, California, our old home states, Illinois, New Jersey, they are, nine of those had Democrat governors. The one that didn't have a Democrat governor was very liberal. Massachusetts, obviously. This is very political. This is very political. We're not doing what we should do to address the disease. The arguments for what we should do are in the booklet. It's time to let America work again. We're putting politics where we shouldn't put it.

No, it's not about people's health and caring. And it's amazing how the script has flipped. I look at that on the left side of the spectrum and if Trump does one thing or says one thing, they're all upset about it. Oh, people are going to die, blah, blah, blah. And then if he does the opposite thing later and changes his mind, they're all upset about that. It's like, how can you win? You cannot win.

Well, opening schools is a perfect example for that. Everybody was for opening schools, you know, the left leaning states. Everybody was talking about, we have to open schools. Trump came out and said, you know, we should open the schools. And all of a sudden, all the Democrats were afraid the kids were gonna die. You know, they were gonna be lined up like cordwood in the halls. But the fact of the matter is that this disease really doesn't affect kids. Very, very rare will. They'll suffer serious consequences from the disease. The president's son, Barron just had this disease and recovered from it. Yeah, now they do. There is a danger with big families that they'll infect older members of the family. And again, we do have to protect those people. But the risk to children from going, the big risk is that they don't go to school. Not that they do go to school.

And it's just like anything else in life, we protect the vulnerable because we're a good society. It doesn't mean you make this blanket rule. I mean, you know, it's the idea of you help an old lady across the street because she's vulnerable. So no one's saying we shouldn't help the vulnerable, but it doesn't mean it should be this blanket solution, if you will. You know, I'd like to ask you a little bit about some of your other work and your experience, you know, running CKE and so forth, if we could touch on that for just a moment.

Sure.

One of the things I did not know until we talked just before we started recording today is that you moved the company out of Southern California. We both are, you know, lived in Southern California. And, you know, CKE was based in Anaheim. I was in Irvine, Newport Beach. You probably lived in the same areas, I'm guessing. And I remember Carl Karcher used to dine at the Pacific Club. I was a member there years ago. And. And you would go there too. And I did not know you moved the company to Tennessee in 2016. Tell us about that.

Well, when, when Jerry. Jerry Brown won his second term, we knew the taxes were going up. We knew that there were going to be these horrific regulatory burdens that they were putting on people. And I think, you know, I should point out the important thing with respect to California was it was meaningful that we moved the, the corporate headquarters. And, you know, that's about 150 jobs. But the fact of the matter is that five years before that, we stopped building restaurants in California. And that's where you really create a Lot of jobs. I mean, at one point in California, we had 20,000 employees between the company and our franchisees. But as a company, we stopped building. Now, the franchisees kept building restaurants, but as a company, we owned about half of them. We stopped because the regulatory burdens when it came to building restaurants were so horrific. It just didn't make any sense. We ended up moving the whole company out of the state. It's funny. When Jerry Brown was elected, I called the executives, my executive team in, which was about eight, nine people. And I said, look, ladies and gentlemen, I think we need to move. I think we need to get out of California. I expected everybody to go. You know, we lived. I had moved the company, the headquarters, from Anaheim to Carpenteria, California, which is right outside of Santa Barbara. You know, we all lived in Santa Barbara. I lived in Montecito, which is just a beautiful place to live. Oprah lives there, and I think it's a wonderful place. But I called everybody in. I thought they were going to go nuts. And everybody, except for one guy, everybody said, we're in. Let's go. When do we leave?

Right, right.

Because they experience the same thing you did at a corporate level at cke. They experienced that same thing at a household, a family level, and an individual level. What I noticed in California, and I really wanted to move for about 15 years, probably from 1995 until I finally left in 2011. And what I realized is that you just don't want to live under a government that is desperate and broke because they become predatory on their citizens. And so all kinds of little ways that people don't really talk much about. It never makes it to the media. The cost of a parking ticket, the cost of a speeding ticket, the cost of your car registration, all of these just. Just, you know, you got to do the smog check on your car every two years. And, you know, it's like, I got a brand new car under a lease. Why do I have to do a smog check? I haven't modified it. You know, it's like these absurd rules, you know, and they just. They just wear on people. They just cost them money, money, money all the time.

I'll give you some examples. In the business sector, IT. During my time at CK, we had restaurants in about 45 states and 40 foreign countries. Those foreign countries included Russia and China.

How many units altogether between Hardee's and Carl's Jr. Around the world?

3,800 units worldwide.

Okay.

And it was easier to build and open a new restaurant in Novosibirsk. Which is in Siberia, than it was to open one in Los Angeles. It was easier to open in Shanghai, China, than it was to open in Los Angeles or San Francisco.

And you think China, a communist laundry would be more difficult, but it's actually easier.

No, it's. I used. We used to be on investor calls, and I'd be the one speaking. Investors would ask, why are your costs so high in California? I always say, well, welcome to the socialist state of California. I mean, that was where we were living. I finally, when people ask me, why'd you move? I tell them, I'm not a socialist. I couldn't live in a socialist state. I mean, one more Bernie Sanders bumper sticker, and I think I was going to have a heart attack.

Yeah, yeah.

It just was. Politically, it was not a fun place to live.

Right, right. Yeah. It's just the burden becomes just incredible. Can you cite any of those regulations? I mean, I can certainly give you examples, but, like, why was it so difficult to just open a new restaurant? How did they make it difficult? Like, any specifics about that you can share?

Well, most of the initial difficulties in opening would be zoning requirements. Before you got a permit to build, they'd want you to put in a street light two blocks away that had nothing to do with your restaurant. I mean, the cities and state, and counties in the city are so starved for cash because all of the money goes into public employee pension fund benefits. So you've got a very small percentage of the tax dollars that are collected that actually go to anything other than salaries and benefits for the teachers and firemen and policemen and God bless firemen and policemen. But the teachers union controls the state.

Well, on a national level, the nea, I call it the National Extortion Association. I mean, it's unbelievable that they couldn't care less about education. In fact, there is that infamous speech of the president of the NEA years ago, and it's recorded, it's on video. Maybe you can find it online if Google hasn't suppressed it like they do. Where they literally, he or she, I can't even remember, it was years ago, was standing up at a podium at one of their conferences saying, we don't care about children, we don't care about education, we care about ourselves. That was unbelievable.

Well, they're now raising the. They passed proposition 13 years ago so you couldn't increase taxes once you bought a piece of property, which, by the.

Way, when Howard Jarvis did that in 1978, that was one of the things I've always theorized that really allowed California's property market to keep booming all those years. Yes, you take away Prop 13 and the real estate market is going to suffer greatly in California beyond all of the other problems it has. But go ahead with what you're saying.

And so this year they've got on the ballot, they're going to do to remove the Proposition 13 limit on commercial property. And the teachers have come out and said they've been very clear about this. This is where they're going to get the money to continue to increase their salaries and their benefits. I mean, they are just going to tax that state to death. So you, so you've got real problems open then. When you open California, for example, you're probably used to the 40 hour work week. You work 40 hours. If you work 41 hours, you get an hour of overtime, which is time and a half. In California, they don't have a 40 hour work week. They have an eight hour work day. If you work eight hours on Monday and you work one hour on Tuesday, you get overtime for the one hour you worked on Tuesday. I mean, they have risks, but you have to take. We had a ton of lawsuits all over the state, not just our company, but every company. If you don't give your employees a rest break at certain times, they can sue. And if you've got a business like a restaurant, maybe a bus with 60 retired people pulls up at 2:00'. Clock. Well, if three of your employees are on rest break or your general manager's at rest break, your restaurant screwed and the people coming in aren't going to get the service tickets. It just was almost impossible to operate a business in California. It got more and more difficult. And now Uber and Lyft are having a problem, but they want to turn their employees into their independent contractors into employees. I mean, everything they can do to make it hard to operate a business, they will do.

And interestingly, the Lyft and the Uber drivers say they don't want to be employees. They don't want to be cut out of the opportunity to go drive their cars and have flex time and do whatever they want, make their own hours. You know, they don't want to be employees. You know, the state is supposedly doing it for their good, but it's not for their good at all. John Stossel did a great piece on that. He's been on the show before. And you know, I'll tell you something else you'll relate to this, Andy. I had a labor attorney that I hired years ago when I lived in Orange County. Her name was Nancy, and she said that her colleagues that work in Los Angeles, when they take an employer to court in la, they call it the bank. That's what they call the courthouse in la. They say, I'm going to the bank. Because they know that the judges all view the companies as just evil, big, terrible companies, and they will always lose and the employee will always win, no matter how right or wrong anybody is. It's just the predisposition of the judges that they just are driving business away and so they ultimately cause, you know, unemployment. I mean, it's so counterproductive.

And it wasn't just. It wasn't just the judge. I. I was an attorney in California before I became CEO of this company. I was Carl Karcher's attorney. He was the founder. But it's also the juries. You go to Los Angeles county and you're trying a lawsuit, you're trying it to a bunch of juries who have been convinced that every business is bad. Every business wants to take advantage of people. Every business is evil. And it's very difficult to get a fair hearing for a business. So you end up settling a lot of cases you wouldn't otherwise settle.

Right.

It's a cost of doing business when you're a caliber.

It's extortion, basically. You know, it's basically extortion. So anything you want to say, Andy, about job creation, the capitalist comeback, your other two books, you know, thank you for sharing that about. Because that's, you know, like inside information that people don't often hear, what you just shared. So thank you for that. But anything else you want to tell listeners about the other two books or these are all such important topics.

I think probably the main thing right now with the election coming up is people should focus on where they want this economy to go. If you want to see the kind of year we had in 2019 where we had the lowest poverty rate going back 60 years, that's 10.5%. That's the lowest since 1959, when they started tracking the data. And the largest single year drop in the poverty rate and the highest increase in median family income. So family income went up more than it ever had, gone up to a new record high of $68,700. If you want to get back to those days, you really need to vote for Donald Trump, who will cut taxes, continue to reduce regulation, focus on domestic energy. We'll start operating under those renegotiated fairer trade agreements. If you vote for Joe Biden, understand it Go to his website. You don't have to believe me on this. Every program this guy proposes, everything is huge. Government spending. Nothing in there is an incentive for private sector businesses to create jobs. And if you don't have job creation in the private sector, wages don't go up. You know, people can't find jobs, they drop out of the labor force. The economy stagnates as it did when Obama and Biden were in office. So it's important, this election is very important for your economic future and for your children's economic future. Because if Joe Biden wins this election, I don't know if the economy ever recovers. And we're in such a dynamic recovery at the moment, I'd sure like to see that continue.

And the things you didn't mention about 2019 also, or that, you know, minorities had it great, women had it great. We had the lowest unemployment rate for African Americans in, I believe, history, since they've been counting. And Latinos, same thing. You know, female workers, same thing. And it was the first time during Trump's presidency. I'm not sure exactly what year it might have been, 2017 or 18, but it took 41 years for American workers to get a real dollar, meaning, adjusted for inflation, pay raise. It took 41 years, and during Trump's administration was the first time there was a real dollar pay raise adjusted for inflation, where Americans were actually making more money in real terms. So, yeah, it's amazing. And, you know, just look at the stock market. I mean, what happened the minute the election results occurred in 2016? Right? The stock market went crazy. It went through the roof because investors and business people were optimistic about growth, and it was just a sea change. Had a Hillary Clinton one, it would have gone the other way completely.

It would never have happened. Under President Trump, we had 24 consecutive months beginning in March of 2018 where we had more job openings than people unemployed. That had never happened since. For one month since the government began tracking the data in 2000, Obama didn't have one month where we had more job openings than people unemployed. And for some of those 17 of those 24 months, there were more than a million job openings more than people unemployed. And beginning in August, because there were so many jobs, employers were competing for employees. We had 20 consecutive months where wage growth, annual wage growth, if exceeded 3% every month for 20 months. You know how many months there were post recession for Obama where wage growth exceeded 3%? Zero. There were none. So people began. The people started coming out of the woodwork to take jobs. The labor force participation rate went up. It went down consistently throughout the Obama administration. And as we just said, particularly for blacks, for Hispanics, for Asians, the poverty rate came way down to historic lows. Median family income went up to historic highs. You know, it's, we can do that again. This will happen again. We are on track for that. But to continue it, we've gotta reelect Donald Trump. If you elect Joe Biden, this will all come to an end.

Very interesting. Do you wanna give out website?

Sure. It's Andy puzder. P u Z-E-R.com that's my website where everything I write and all my appearances, this one will go on there too. And you can also go online at Amazon and get the book It's Time to Let America Work Again or the other books you mentioned. The Capitalist Comeback is probably my favorite of all the books. But this new one that deals with letting America get back to work again is very topical and I think it'll give you the arguments you need to address other people and to help out your community. So I'm hoping people will give it a shot.

Excellent. And it's a short, easy read too, so that's nice for today's busy, busy life and short attention span. So that's good for good for a lot of people who are very busy and can't add another book to their list because this is a, this is a quick one. Andy, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate having you.

My pleasure, Jason. Good to be here. Thank you.

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