270: Rich Man Poor Man with Bill Whittle

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My pleasure to welcome Bill Whittle to the show. He is the host of afterburner and the creator of the rich man poor man video that I saw. That was extremely enlightening. And he just has a lot of interesting perspective on society, on history, on social issues and political issues and really kind of debunks a lot of widely held misconceptions about politics and society. So it's just going to be a great pleasure to talk to Bill today. And Bill comes to us from Los Angeles today. How are you, Bill?

I'm doing great. Thanks very much for inviting me.

Good. Well, my pleasure. I love your work. Friends have sent me videos. They've circulated around the social media, Facebook and so forth and very enlightening. Tell us what your perspective is on. I mean, you can start with a rich man poor man video if you want. I mean, that was just a very enlightening video, I thought.

Well, thank you. I'd Done one a little bit earlier, about maybe a month or two earlier. The afterburner videos are the ones I do at pjtv, and I did one independently with in a firewall series called Eat the Rich. And they're kind of connected. The Rich was based on some statistical work done by a brilliant guy on our team named Iowa Hawk. He's the funniest guy on the Internet and he's a hot rodder, and he just loves to tinker with cars, but he's also a mathematical genius. And basically, in Eat the Rich, he took a look at what the federal budget was about 360. I'm sorry, about $3.6 trillion, which turns out to about $10 billion a day. And so in Eat the Rich, what he did was he looked at the fact that if we spend $10 billion a day, and if progressives tell you, I keyed it off of Michael Moore saying that there's tons of money in America to spend, just that the rich are hoarding it all. So if you take a look at the fact that we take all of the combined profits of Exxon Mobil and Walmart, the two most evil companies in the world, that's $40 billion.

And you're saying that sarcastically, of course.

Of course. Of course. $40 billion, well, that runs the federal government for four days. So that gets you from January 1st at midnight to January 4th, if you take every penny of their profits and looking at the world that way, take all of the money that the top Forbes 400 have and that buys you. I don't remember what the exact number is. Let's say it's 23 days of federal spending or something. What it does is it takes a look at the fact that if you were to take everything from everybody, you might be able to run the federal government for one year, at which point you would have nothing left. Nothing. The spending is out of control. And when they justify the spending, the reason they used to justify the spending is always. It's always the poor. We have to help the needy. We have to have the poor. We have to do this as poor people who are starving in America and all this other.

And what they really should be saying is we have to buy votes so I can get reelected and maintain power and expand my bureaucracy and my power base. That's really what they're doing.

So what they do is they hand out benefits to a country where half of the people don't pay income tax. So they're buying their votes. And the justification that they use to inflict it on the other half is need. This is how socialists always work. They always talk about the need. Now, I'm not particularly bragging about. This is not anything to brag about, just so people are aware of this. I mean, I've been dirt poor for a fair portion of my life, and I had to decide whether I was going to pay the electric bill or the rent for years and years and years. So I am not unsympathetic to this position. I mean, it can drive you fully mad just worrying about things. I've been there. I know what it's like. But when you get down to an actual analysis of what the definition of poor in America is, you realize that the progressives are using this idea, this Dickensian idea of people who have to decide which one of their children they want to sell so they can find a crust of bread to eat for the night. And in Rich Man, Poor Man, I took a look at data gathered about the state of poor people in America. And again, not saying that their life is cushy or easier or anything, it's never good to not have enough money. But with that said, you find out that 82% of all Americans have air conditioning. And I think it's 76% of poor people do. 31% of all average American households have a game console like an Xbox, and 29% of poor households do. So if 1 in 3 average Americans have a game console and 1 in 3 poor Americans have a video game console, you have a different idea of what poverty is by the American definition. So we're the first society in history to produce poor people whose primary health problem is obesity. That's a remarkable thing if you think about it.

It is, it is. That reminds me, Bill, it's interesting. A few years back, I did Thanksgiving at a food kitchen, a soup kitchen, and I couldn't believe that I was serving food. And I was. I was one of the thinnest people there. All the poor were coming in. Now, granted, I know that a lot of this is because of it's just junky food and bad nutrition, but most of it is bad habits. The point is, there is enough food. I just couldn't believe. Here I'm scooping out food for people that are far more obese than I am and just thought this was kind of ironic. It's crazy.

So you have to ask yourself, in the west today, in America today, let's say you have to ask yourself what poverty is. Is poverty a state of insufficient resources for you to be able to function as A human being or has poverty become.

And one of the things I said in an essay many years ago is that if you have a club of billionaires, the guy with 900 million is a chump. He's the poor guy at the table. When you understand that the poorest Americans are wealthier than 90% of the rest of the world, and that includes places like Europe and Japan and China and so on, when you realize that statistically the living standards for the poorest Americans are better than they are for 90% of the rest of the world, you have to start asking yourself some fundamental questions. And one of the questions you have to ask yourself is, has poverty in its original meaning been eliminated? Because as you well know, if you define poverty as the bottom 15% of any population, that can never be eliminated. By definition, it can't be eliminated.

Well, because there's always a bottom 15. If the poorest people in say, one of these oil rich countries have a net worth of $400,000, which they probably do, frankly in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or something, I don't know which one. But say they've got a high net worth, there's still people that have billions and mult and decimillions and centimillions. So certainly by definition there's always a bottom 5% or bottom 15% of every strata.

And this is kind of the point I'm trying to make. Again with the caveat. I know what the left is and I know how they function and how they like to defame people. I'm not saying poverty in America is swell. I'm not saying it's a wonderful condition. I'm not saying everybody should enjoy it. I'm not saying any of that. I'd like to see people have as much money as they need in order to achieve their goals in life. That would be my goal. That's why I believe in free markets. But with that said, you begin to approach a definitional strategy of poverty that is based on a percentage of the population, not upon some objective need, some objective condition. And I'm not launching a war on poor people. I'm not attacking them. What I am attacking is this idea that people who work hard for a living have to continue to make sacrifices and give up half of everything, half so far, of everything they make to go to other people for the stated purpose of eliminating poverty, when that poverty does not really exist in any meaningful.

Sense anymore in the US and of course it does exist around the world.

Of course. Look, of course you go to Africa or you go Even into Mexico, South America, you see grinding poverty, people starving to death in the millions, in Africa all the time. And this kind of also bleeds into the health care issue. Not a bad turn of Fraser, actually, because if you listen to European intellectuals, they'll tell you that American, you just walk through an American street and you don't know whether to step over the bodies of the starving or the bodies of the dying from their injuries or their diseases, which go untreated because of lack of health care. And it's simply not true. It's simply not true. The health care issue, the whole point of Obamacare was to take care of this vast, unprotected group of Americans who don't get any health care. That's what they say. They have no health care.

We.

Well, first of all, we all agree that 93% of the American population was covered. And so that meant that 93% of our population had the best health care in the world. In the world. So what does that say about the 7% or the 6% or the 30 million or 40 million or whatever that number is? It says that those people have not bought health insurance. But I was living without health insurance during those days, and I ruptured a disc in my neck. And they went in and they gave me the surgery and it went. And it got written off. Which means that somebody who is more responsible than I was paid for that operation. Taxpayers of Florida paid for that operation. People who had their act up together a lot better than I did paid for that operation. But it got taken care of. You don't see people sitting outside of hospitals with broken legs or dying of tuberculosis because they don't have health care. Those people are taken care of and the rest of America pays for it. And I have been doing my very best in the years since that incident to be as successful as I can, not only to take care of myself, but to pay back some of that money through taxation and so on. But look, this whole thing is endemic, isn't it? It's a pattern. When you have half of the population that doesn't pay anything, you have got a very, very, very dangerous situation because you've got the one thing that De Tocqueville, among others, said would be the death of democracy. When people realize they can vote themselves money out of the treasury, it's all over. And when politicians pander to half of the population and say, you guys don't have to do anything other than vote for us. We'll take it from rich people. Well, sooner or later, that'll be 50%, then 60%, then 80% of the people don't pay anything. And the burden on the producers gets higher and higher and higher. And then what happens? We all know what happens.

We all know what happens. And what happens is called Michigan.

That's exactly right.

It's Detroit.

Beautifully said, beautifully said. That's exactly, exactly what happens. Michigan happens. And Michigan means that the people who create wealth, the wealth creators, either stop creating wealth, they just take their money and go and retire, or they go someplace else and that's what happens. And then people look around and go, we can't figure it out. It's an utter mystery why Detroit is in ruins. It must just be bad luck.

And California is about to become the new Michigan.

California. Watching California go from being the most innovative, free, dynamic society in the world to becoming the Union of socialist Soviet Republics is the most heartbreaking thing that I have witnessed in my lifetime. It is just heartbreaking to watch this. It's just unbelievable. I'll give you an example of California. A friend of mine has a nice pool deck, but he wasn't able to swim all summer because they were working on his pool. Pool was torn up all summer long. Why was the pool torn up? Well, the pool was torn up because apparently some girl one place, one time was swimming in a pool and she got stuck at the bottom of the pool by the suction on the drain and she drowned. And so now every single pool in California has to have two drains, every single one of them. And some politicians somewhere decided, well, we can't let this happen again. There's obviously this epidemic that's sweeping the nation of children being sucked to their deaths at the bottom of swimming pools by the unbearable vacuum of the drain. So some guy passes a law and every single apartment complex in California has to spend 50 grand or whatever it takes to be compliant with this bill.

Hey, listen, you know, I own a bunch of rental properties and I remember I don't like owning condos, but I have a couple of them in my portfolio. And then I have apartment buildings and a lot of single family homes, which I like a lot, but condos are not my favorite. But I'll just tell you I got a notice on that exact issue you're talking about right now where the homeowners association sent out a notice to all the residents that they had to create a special assessment to update the pool drains because of that exact story, that exact accident. The thing that happens here. I mean, well, certainly tragic. Nobody wants anybody to die, but life, we just Got to understand life is fraught with risk. I've seen people's little two year old children pass away of a heart condition and another friend, 25 years old, killed by a drunk driver. I mean, it's tragic, but you can't tell everybody they gotta stop driving. You just can't solve every problem. I mean, that's what it seems like the left doesn't understand.

We are getting now to the. I'm really, really glad you mentioned this risk issue because I think if I had to stand as far back as I could stand and look at, look at America from geostationary orbit here and try and put my finger on what is going wrong. It's become American. Life has become asymptotic. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Does that mean the nanny state?

No, it's a bigger issue than that. I think everybody knows what an exponential curve is. It's a curve that as you move to the right, as you advance in time, the rate of climb becomes ever steeper and at infinity it becomes vertical, right? So an exponential curve is one that rapidly, rapidly accelerates. The faster you go, the more the numbers go up. An asymptotic curve is just the opposite. It's one that starts out very steep and as you get further and further in time, it starts to level out and level out and level out. So what do I mean when I say American society has become asymptotic? In my father's time, or certainly in my grandfather's time, if he worked hard his entire life and really did well and saved his money, he might be able to electrify his house. And electrifying his house means that he does not have to get up in the morning at 4 o', clock, March down to the well or the river with a bucket pump. That thing carry water? Water is heavy. Most kids today have never had to carry any water. Water is heavy. They don't have to get up in the morning and chop wood because chopping wood takes a lot of work. I've chopped enough wood in a half an hour to know that it practically kill you. They don't have to do any of these things. So a man who worked hard his entire life could show real progress for that, right? Suddenly you have hot and cold running water and you have electricity and you have all of these things like a toaster and an iron and maybe even a washing machine. And you've made some progress in life and you're grateful for your progress. What I mean by saying American culture today is asymptotic. Is simply this. If you're 17 years old today in America, what does your life consist of? Well, you have 24 hour entertainment, 24 hour television, you have 24 hour games. You have absolutely unfettered access to all of the information available to the human race at any instant that you want it. Your electricity has never been off. You've got all the food you could ever eat at any time of the day that you want it. And if there's something special you want, you simply get in your car, which you've always had, and go get it. You simply go get it. And when I say go get it, I don't mean you have to hike over mountains or go kill bears. You make a five minute drive and you go get it. Every single need that you've ever had as a human being, that people have struggled for millennia is present at your birth. You've never had to want for anything. If you're a 17 year old in America with virtual certainty, you've never been cold, you've never been hungry, and you've never been in pain. Not for more than a few minutes, not for the time it took to get you to the hospital or the medicine cabinet. Right? So the question is, where do you go from there? Right. Where do you go from there? What do you do to have any sense of accomplishment or improvement in life? I don't know where you can go. You're trapped under this asymptotic curve of prosperity that has given you so much that it becomes virtually impossible to. To improve on it. And the problem here is not that things are great. I love the fact that things are great. The problem is, is that people assume that this is the natural condition of life and that it can never change. And so when you get into a world where no one dies until they're 80, right? And when. And when everything is supposed to be protected and all of your needs are met, no one has to deal with the idea of risk. If some kid is killed on a bicycle, then either we didn't wear enough helmets or that we didn't have enough stop signs, or we didn't have enough this. And we got to ban this, we got to improve this, and we got to have video cameras. Whatever. It assumes that the world has become perfect. And the world is never perfect. It never has been perfect. I understand that the next video I'm going to do as an afterburner has got to do with this Reno air race crash. And my understanding is that Rachel Maddow and others have been calling for air races to be banned. And the reason they call for them to be banned is because they don't go to air races. It doesn't cost them anything to ban air shows because they don't go to air shows. So this is the great American pastime now is calling for the banning or the regulation or the removal or the destruction of things that we don't do, but which we happen to decree are harmful to society because one person or two people or 12 people got killed one day. Well, we simply can't have this. This has to be banned and eliminated. My response to people like Rachel Maddow, to these people who live in skyscrapers in New York and talk about banning air shows because they never go to air shows.

They're sort of like the academics in their ivory course.

They are. Yeah, of course they are. Well, 12 people were killed at Reno. And look, of course that's a tragedy. And I'm not being callous to their loss. I'm not saying I don't care about them. Of course I do. But they assumed a risk when they went to that air show, and I'm sure all of them knew they assumed a risk. They assumed a risk when they drove to the air show. Right. They assumed the risk the minute that they entered this world that something would happen to them. And the price of entering the world is that something could happen to you.

The only secure place is death.

That's right. Well, that's what they want for us, really, when you get right down to it. So when you get to people like Rachel Maddow who want to ban all these things in the public interest, of course, never for them. It's never. Because they never come out and say, I don't like this, so we're going to ban it. So it's like, you know, in the interest of public safety, so that nobody else gets killed in air show, I think maybe we should ban air shows. Well, 12 people killed at Reno. Last time spectators were killed at the Reno air races was 47 years ago. My response to Rachel Maddow would be, if you want to really ban things that are killing people, if you really. If you're. If you're all about the public safety, as you claim, and you really want to shut down these murderous things, well, why don't we shut down something that murdered 600 people last year and 700 people the years before that, and sometimes murders 1200 people a year. Rachel, if you really want to do something for the public safety, why don't you ban New York City? Why don't you just shut down Manhattan where six or seven hundred people are murdered every year. If it's really about public safety, why don't you close your apartment where you live, lock up everything, leave it there, get on the last bus, blow the bridges and seal the tunnels and then we don't have to worry about all those hundreds of people dying every year. Right. And if that sounds a little ridiculous to you and a little absurd, it's probably because somebody's talking about shutting down something that you actually enjoy. You'll say, well, that's the price of living in New York. My response to that would be, well, that's the price of watching airplanes fly at 500 miles an hour because you kind of enjoy that kind of thing. It's assumed risk, right? It's living life like an adult and understanding that there are no guarantees and there are no receipts that you're not promised a life of 100 years of perfect health and longevity interrupted only by a quick and painless death. No, that's not how it works. But that's how we think it works. And that's the American disease today.

That's a very good. Well put, well put. Definitely agree with you there. Hey, Bill, you know, I want to go back to this issue of the rich and the poor for just a moment, if we can. I love that video that you did that you talked about initially, where you looked at the number of days we could fund the ridiculous out of control federal government. And we're only talking about the federal government there, right? Not all the states and municipal governments which add to the problem. There's simply not enough money to take the solution. The concept of let's just tax all the people that fly private jets more. And not understanding that of course a Gulfstream jet costs somewhere around $50 million and very few people actually have those. Okay. What really the left is proposing, what Obama's proposing is he's saying tax everybody that makes over 200,000 a year. And if you live in California or New York or any expensive place, that ain't much money by today's standards. And so there's not enough to get the taxing of the rich is not a solution because there's just not enough to get, first of all. And that's what your video so beautifully illustrated. But in addition to that, of course, and Reagan proved this, I think very well, the more you tax, the more you suppress economic activity. And so you actually reduce the amount of money coming into government coffers with higher marginal tax rates.

But they don't care about that.

Right.

Barack Obama was asked before he became president, if you could be proven categorically and it can be that raising tax rates actually lowered federal revenues, would you still be in favor of it? And he said, yes, because it's not about the revenues. It's about the equality. So first things first. Let's get this idea.

That is a scary, scary response. It's about the equality.

Let's just look at what's really there and let's look at what these people say in their own words. It is not about raising revenues to provide services to people who need it. It's not about grandmom, Social Security. It is about wealth redistribution by people whose primary motivation in life is envy. That's the first thing we need to understand. The president admitted it verbatim. I'm not putting wor in his mouth. He said this, right? This is why the guy's always on teleprompter. Because when he's not on teleprompter, he says what's on his mind. And when he says what's on his mind, people begin to go, wait a minute now. So that's the first thing we need to understand. Second thing we need to understand about this federal spending is it is an addiction. It is the greatest addiction of all. If you had a credit card in your wallet that had no limit and you never had to make payments on it, what would your life be like?

Be wonderful, right? Yeah.

It would be extravagant. We can say it would be extravagant. Right? When people talk about spending the thing you need to ask them about this federal spending is this. People say, well, spending. We just need a little more money, and then we'll be able to pay for everything we want. You just ask them this. How much cocaine does a cocaine addict use? And the answer is, all of it. They do all of it. There's not a coke addict in the world who says, you know what? That's enough. I think I'm going to go to work for a while. I'll put this away for a couple weeks and I'll come back to this maybe on the 15th or something. They do all of it. It's an addiction. These people are addicted. They will take every penny you have. If they're taxing you 50% now, then they'll take 60 and 70 and 80, and then they'll take 100 and buddy, I have to tell you something. I remember when I was a young guy, I was probably 23, 24 years old. I briefly dated this girl who was a teenager Came from Britain. She was a tax refugee from. Her father was from. From Great Britain. And she was talking about the tax rates on her dad, who was doing real well before he left. And she told me the story. I don't know if it was true. She told it to me. It seems reasonable. And she said, you know what? They taxed my dad the final year before we left. What. What percentage of his income? I said, What? She said, 103%. I said, that's impossible. She said, no, it's not. They took everything he made that year, plus they took 3% of his earnings of that year from his savings.

Unbelievable wealth tax, which Obama has pondered, by the way.

Yeah, well, yeah. So where does this end? It never ends. Where does Barack Obama's spending line. Where does. Where did the Democrats. Because it's not just him. Where does the Democrat revenue line cross the spending line in the future? They never say because it doesn't. They don't understand it. They don't understand it. They're too stupid to understand the things that every single regular American understands, and that is that you cannot spend more than you take in over any length of time.

Well, I say, Bill, that they're not too stupid. They know exactly what they're doing, and they're simply either conspiring to bankrupt and destroy the country or they're just simply pandering to get more votes and maintain their power and kick the can down the road. It's one or the other. I mean, they can't not understand it. I mean, come on, this is so beautifully simple.

Well, Maxine Waters doesn't understand it. I'm convinced that some of these people don't understand it. I mean, she's complaining about why there are no jobs and how if these are her words. These are not my words. If Barack Obama was not black, we would be marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks. I think she said that verbatim.

Well, she's the one who said no justice, no peace during the LA riots. You know, encouraging that.

There are a lot of people saying that. The thing that she said that is so indicative is here's a person who doesn't understand why there aren't any jobs. She can't figure it out. It's another mystery. And then she says to banks, if you do not comply with our will and. And basically forgive these mortgages, we will tax you out of existence, unquote.

Then there will be no loans and no banks.

Well, we'll tax you. When a representative of Congress says that you do what we Say, or else we're going to tax you out of existence. What the companies in the private sector naturally and very intelligently do say to themselves is this. Well, here's this threat looming out here. We better save every single penny we have because we never know when these idiots, these malcontents and these charlatans are going to put a gun to our head and tax us out of existence. So I don't think we're going to hire this new person or buy this new truck or open this new factory because we've already been threatened. We're threatened every day by this administration, by people who make us into villains and who say we're the source of all our problems. And it's those fat cats with their corporate jets. Of course businesses are sitting on money. I would, too. They're waiting for this storm to pass. They're waiting for some certainty. And even more than these repressive tax rates and these unbearable regulations, the one thing that the private sector cannot abide is uncertainty. They don't know. Nobody knows. When the federal government, and I'm talking about in the first two months of its administration, when the Obama administration, can come in and buy Fiat, simply declare that Chrysler's shareholders are not holding the papers that they thought they hold that we've just decided to come in and buy legal Fiat, say, no, the money that is owed to you is not owed to you anymore. We're sorry, we're not even really sure.

We're just going to give it to the unions, basically.

It's just going to. It's just been done. And tough luck for you now when that happens, my friend. We are now dealing with a very different kind of America. We're not talking about liberals or Democrats, we're not talking about conservatives or Republicans. We're not talking about any of that anymore. We are now talking about whether or not we are under the rule of law or whether we are a lawless society determined by the whims of the people in power. We have a dictatorship that when politicians can break contracts at whim, private contracts, when a politician can go in and declare it void, legally, we no longer live under the rule of law. And then you live in the kind of world that is the Third World, and it's just a matter of time before the living conditions mimic the legal structure.

It's a slippery slope, there's no question about it.

And it's a steep slope, too.

It sure is. And you know, listen, I pretty much agree with you on all of this. I want to ask you a question. I want you to help me sort this out because I think conceptually you're absolutely spot on. However, in today's modern world of business, with Internet, with scalability, with lobbying of Congress especially, and the lobbyist scam, which I think is a scam in a lot of ways, big corporations, the evil rich, as the left likes to call them, which, you know, I don't think they're evil. However, I interviewed the author of Winner Take All Society, and I don't know if you're familiar with that book, but he's a professor and I like the concept of the book. I was interested in it. But when he got on my show, he started talking about how the government needs to do more and regulate this and regulate that. I thought, oh my God, this is just going to be another disaster, right, if this happens. But these big Wall street companies, they're not existing in a truly capitalist environment. They're going and they're lobbying the government to make laws that regulate them more. While they go on TV and they say, oh, it's too much government regulation. They're playing both sides of the fence. Because what they're doing is by saying secretly, they say, regulate us more. And the reason they say that is because they know it keeps out competition. I'm not going to compete and open up a brokerage firm or an investment bank and compete with Goldman Sachs anytime soon. The entry is impossible. They've raised the bar so much that it's not a fair playing field anymore. And I really do think that, well.

You'Ve hit upon the economic system that is always kind of lurking in the background. But when you have this kind of political cronyism, this kind of basically lawlessness in terms of contract law, then what emerges in its place rapidly is mercantilism. Some people call it crony capitalism. I never want to hear that word used again, because it associates capitalism with this. It's got nothing to do with capitalism. It's the opposite of capitalism. Free market capitalism says that laws protect people against things like fraud and maybe insider trading, and that's it. But mercantilism is the use of political influence in order to set your business up for an advantage that it has no right having. Let's take GE for example. GE paid no income tax. How's that possible? Jeff Immelp is Barack Obama's go to guy, right? Wasn't he given the Medal of Freedom? No, that was Warren Buffett. Another guy, another hypocrite. I'll talk about Buffett in a second. But here's the guy who's, like the water carrier for the Obama foundation on the big business front. So GE is a massive company. And when Barack Obama was elected, I actually asked myself, I said, why? How can these big businesses support the socialists? And then it's exactly what you said a moment ago. GE reckons, look, one of the things that GE makes is the MRI machines, magnetic resonance imaging machines, these medical devices, right? And it is a much tougher thing. I don't have to tell you this. It's much tougher for GE to go out and try and sell 600 of these things to 600 different individual private hospitals than it is to pay a little money, get a little political influence, and sell 1000 of these them to the federal government. That's one sale, right? And it's not even a tough sale. And you don't have to worry about competition because you bought the political influence. Then they write laws that say that this has to happen. And there you go. They write laws that protect you against competition. Mercantilism is the opposite of the free market. It's not an outgrowth of the free market. It's not a mutation. It's not what the free market is. It's the opposite of the free market. And when you think of all of these images you have in the public culture of capitalists, the fat cat guy, you know, with the top hat and the enormous stomach, holding a sack of money, that image, that's Mr. Potter from.

It's a Wonderful Life.

Well, yeah.

The Monopoly guy image of the guy in the top hat and the waistcoat, the fat guy holding a big bag of money, was drawn by Thomas Nast back in the 1800s. And it was done to represent the trusts, these mercatoists, monstrosities that existed back at the time of Tammany hall, which were all Democrats, by the way. I just feel like I need to add that. But Tammany hall was Boss Tweed in New York City. And at the end of the 1800s, if you wanted a contract in New York City, this was open knowledge. This wasn't, like, secret under. This was openly known. If you wanted to do $100,000 worth of renovations to a building in New York City under Boss Tweed, you had to come up with $100,000 to do the renovations and $100,000 to pay to the Democratic political machine, which went directly into Boss Tweed's pockets. It's mercantilism. It is this unholy alliance. It's an aneurysm of government regulation and private Enterprise. And so yes, of course, this is the problem with these big business guys, with these mercantilists. And I don't know what the answer is, but when you get a guy like Warren Buffett saying they should raise taxes on me, they should raise taxes on me. I'm a millionaire, I'm a billionaire, my secretary pays more.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

You know what? You know what I thought, you know what I found out? I found this out yesterday. Do you know what Warren Buffett's take home salary is? How much his pay, his taxable income? $100,000.

Yeah, I had a feeling it wasn't that high.

It's $100,000. I make more money than Warren Buffett takes home. I am taxable. Let me rephrase that. I don't make, I don't make a 100th of 1% of what Warren Buffett makes, but my taxable income is higher than his. He makes $100,000 in taxable salary because he has sheltered everything. And not just unfairly, it's all done legally, but also because almost all of his money is through capital gains.

Well, let's go see if Buffett is going to start lobbying for a wealth tax. And let's see if they can take.

Your ex girlfriend there. Let's see if they can take 3% of his multi billion dollars of wealth away every year.

Yeah, let's see how he feels about that. And the fact that they're not talking about that means that Warren Buffett is an enormous hypocrite. He is a mercantilist. He is taking a position which sounds very noble, which endears him to these progressives. I'm a billionaire. I think you should raise my taxes. See, See, even the billionaires say that we're not taxing them enough. Well, Warren Buffett makes $100,000 a year of taxable income. He's actually probably not paying any income tax at all. He's certainly under Barack Obama's magical $250,000 level.

Well, the other thing is he's not. I mean, and you'd think that Warren Buffett's secretary is a pretty special person and he's not paying her 100 grand. No, I would think that's a. I would think that's a pretty high end.

Bucks a year, minimum.

Yeah, I would think that's a pretty high end secretary there to one of the richest men in the world.

This is how the whole thing works, right? It's all about political influence. Leave business alone. The only. Look, I'm not some People say, oh, you free market guys, you don't want any regulations. That's like saying, I'm a football fan who doesn't want any rules. A Of course I want rules. I want rules about penalties. I want rules about out of bounds. I want the clock to stop when a guy runs out of bounds. I want a touchdown to be worth seven points. But what I want is I want a touchdown to be worth six points every time. I want a field goal to be worth three points every time. I don't want a referee to be able to throw a flag at a guy because he doesn't like the way he looks at him. And I want a referee to throw a flag at another guy because he doesn't like orange and guys wearing the orange uniform. I want a limited set of consistent rules that are applied uniformly to everybody. And that's what everybody in the free market wants.

You mean like a flat tax? How's that for an idea?

Yeah, how about that?

Yeah, how about that? Steve Forbes, he got no traction. You know, I remember I was in Russia and I met. I was hanging out with a couple of Steve Forbes daughters and I asked them what happened the last time he ran for President. They said it was just a complete media blackout, no one would cover him. It was just he couldn't get any traction. It sounds very much like Ron Paul and how he's marginalized in the media and the guy has the support of the people. You know, you just see it over and over. I mean, it's unbelievable what happens and how they just don't cover him. Don't know if you saw the Jon Stewart video, which is pretty funny actually, about Ron Paul. You really should look that up. It's mind boggling. It really is.

Well, Forbes wasn't covered because that idea, a flat tax idea, would destroy the Democratic Party. There'd be. No, there'd be. Forget the Democratic Party. It would destroy liberalism. Right. If everybody were in this together and it wasn't on how much you made, but how much you spent, then I guess that's. I don't know whether that's a flat tax or the fair tax. I lose track. But look, here's the thing. If everybody's in it together, then everybody's in it together. You don't get to divide the country up into tribes anymore and play them against each other. And for people who say, well, that's unfair, the rich should pay more, Let me just ask you this. Let's take an example that everybody can connect to.

The rich will pay more. On a flat tax, they'll pay 15%.

That's right. Needless to say. But let me just take an example that most people can resonate with, right? When you're standing in line at the grocery store on a football Sunday, let's say, and there's a long line of you're 15 people deep, and every single register is filled with people, right? And you've got all different kinds of Americans standing in line to go and get their stuff for their barbecue that day. No one for a second thinks that the guy in front of you should pay more of your grocery bill because he makes more money than you do. It never enters anybody's mind. No one. No one ever says, I want to see your bank balance before you check out because you should actually be paying for some of my groceries. Or maybe I should be paying for some of yours because you're not doing as well as I am. Nobody thinks that way. But that's what the income tax system is today. It's a way of checking the wallet of the guy in front of you. And if he has more money, you take some of it. And if the guy behind you has less money, then he takes some of yours. No one ever thinks that way in public. When you're dealing with real people, it's only when you demonize classes of people like these progressives are becoming expert at that, people start thinking that way. I think most people in a supermarket line would say, look, if there's somebody outside the door who's starving, every American who's decent, you see genuine need, right? Real hunger. There's not a person in the world in America who would walk by without chipping into that. So with that said, why is it that we can all understand that when we go to a checkout line to get our Sunday groceries, it's a question of, hey, this is my business, right? And if I'm buying T bone steaks and you're buying flank steaks, well, if you want T bone steaks, figure out a way to work a little harder.

Or sacrifice something else. Sacrifice a different part of your life.

Something else. Yeah. If you're.

You don't need the brand new Nikes.

If you're texting somebody on your iPhone about how unfair it is that the guy in front of you has T bone steaks while you don't.

Might be onto the nature of the problem here.

Yeah, exactly. No, it's very true. And, you know, it seems, as far as the unemployment issue, seems like one way that you could just instantly increase employment is get rid of the minimum wage. Why doesn't the free market dictate what we pay people? You see the left constantly talking about how black unemployment is so high and teen unemployment is so high and teenagers can't get to hire, get summer jobs. Well, how about taking away some of the regulations on the businesses? How about letting the businesses hire people for whatever people are willing to work for? I mean, what a novel idea that is in business. When I go. I mean, I only work for myself, really, because it's my own company. But when I go negotiate with a potential customer, no one's regulating how much that customer should pay me for whatever I'm going to provide with them. It's up to the free market.

Well, let me just close it. My time with you today with it with a little personal story here. And look, I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal. This is not unique to me. There are millions of people who've done what I'm about to tell you. This is the idea of America. And I didn't know it in advance. It just occurred to me. I was 12 or 13 years old. I got into astronomy in a big way. I just loved the idea of astronomy. And I saw a telescope that I wanted for Christmas. My dad said, if you pay half, I'll pay the other half. You can get a free Christmas present. I said, okay. So I got massively into astronomy and I moved to Miami. And then on a field trip, I went to the Miami Space Transit Planetarium in fifth grade. And when I walked into that building, I could feel new neurons being burned into my head. I was just. I was absolutely overwhelmed. I said, this is it. This is what. This is what I want to do. And So I was 13 years old. I went to the show, and I came back that weekend and took a bus there and said, I really just would love to be a part of this. And I'll do anything you need. I'll take tickets. I'll sweep the the floor. Sometimes people get sick because of the motion there. I'll clean up the vomit. I'll show people to their seats. Just anything. I just want to be a part of it. The first words out of their mouth was, well, we don't have any money to pay you. We're a museum and we're very tight budget. I said, you don't have to pay me. You don't have to pay me. I just want to be here. And this was not a ploy on my part. This wasn't like, this is my secret master Plan. I just wanted to be there. I wanted to do it. It was a field I wanted to get interested in. And I suppose on some level I did feel like if I can show them over the course of a year or so that I. That I'm actually valuable, maybe they'll find some room for me. So I went in and I took tickets and did all that stuff that day. And they said, yeah, nice. And they never thought they'd see me again. But I came back on Sunday and I came back the following Sunday. And honestly, I hadn't been there four or five times before. They said, oh, we got to pay this kid something. So they started paying me 250 an hour and still have my first check. It was, I think I had the check for $37.50 for two weeks work or a month's work or something. But the point is, they started paying me 250 an hour. And then I started watching what these console operators did. And when there was an opportunity to do a show and nobody to run it, there's an emergency. I told them I knew how to do it because I'd been practicing on my own time, right? Because I loved it. So they gave me the opportunity in the short form of this. I was a planetarium console operator at the Miami Space Transit Planetarium when I was 14 years old. And it's only because I wanted it. I didn't have any special connections. I didn't have any connections. I just wanted it. And I came in there every day and showed them that I wanted it. And this is the thing our listeners need to understand. You're a businessman. You know this in your bones to be true. People like that make businessmen almost weep. Business people live their lives to find people like this. And when people ask me, gee, how do I succeed in the world? I say, there's only one thing you need to know. You don't need a college degree. You don't need this. You don't need this money. You don't need this capital. You don't need this kind of personality. There is one thing you need in the world if you want to succeed, and that is very simple. Whatever job it is you take, you make sure you get there a half an hour before the boss arrives. And you stay a half an hour after he leaves. And don't mention it. Don't say a word about it. You do this for three months and you are on your way. Because people who run businesses, who start businesses, love what they're doing. They're not in it for the money. Money's great, but nobody starts a business. I'm not aware of anybody who started a business because I want to make money. I just got to find a business. People do things that they love and when they see people who are on the team who really get it, who seem to love it too, that person will be on a rocket ship of promotion and success. There's no way to stop them. And it's just that simple. It's just that simple.

Absolutely. There's no question about it. That's one of the great things about the free market, Bill, is that people pre select themselves for the thing they most love. And the money comes as a result of them doing what they love and expressing their love to the world and providing great products and services. And that's why we must at all costs maintain a free market system and capitalism. I mean this is a very very, it's a very intense time in history right now of this country and I sure, I sure hope things work out correctly because it could kind of go either way here.

And I think if this guy gets voted out of office and we see low regulations and a lower tax rate, we're going to see 7% economic growth in this country. There's so much pent up growth that's just waiting this thing out.

I know, I know and it's just been great talking with you today. Your videos are fantastic. Where can people find them?

Well, I'm on every week@pjtv.com it's a membership based thing but they let you watch 10 of them for free and if you've never been there you might want to check it out. I do an afterburner series there and show called trifecta with two of my good friends Steve Green and Scott Ott and on YouTube. If you get on YouTube and search for Bill Whittle Channel. W H I T T L E Bill Whittle Channel. It's one word. Pretty much all of my other videos are up there and eat the riches there and a number of others. So that's generally the best way to find it. And you can always go to billwhittle.net fantastic.

Great, great websites, great resources and phenomenal video. So thank you so much Bill Whittle. Appreciate having you on the show today.

My pleasure. You take care now.

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