{"id":26326,"date":"2007-07-25T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:10:35","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T05:10:35","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:10:35","slug":"america_has_never_had_it_better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/25\/america_has_never_had_it_better\/","title":{"rendered":"America Has Never Had It Better"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: As you people know, I constantly try to focus on positive aspects of life because we\u2019re so inundated daily by the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party with pessimism and doom and gloom. There is a column today. John Stossel has it at RealClearPolitics.com. ‘Good News: The World Gets Better.\u2019 You know, one of my themes is that we\u2019ve never had it better as human beings in this country than we have it today, and every day in America is better than the day before. Yet people become obsessed with the opposite. Pessimism and doom overtakes people for a whole host of reasons. I think one of the reasons we have, frankly, so much liberalism and so much nanny-statism is there\u2019s so much time on people\u2019s hands because of affluence that they can indulge in activities that in the past human beings never had time for because they were too busy working very hard dealing with aspects of life in order to earn a living. Stossel begins this way: ‘In political life today, you are considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.\u2019 You are also a liberal, if you demand that governor impose your preferences on others, and that\u2019s exactly right. That\u2019s a great definition of what liberals are. ‘But what\u2019s compassionate about that? Compassionate is ‘live and let live,” which is the essence of conservatism, ladies and gentlemen.<\/p>\n

Go do what you want to do. It\u2019s fine with me. You want to engage in risky behavior, destructive behavior? Go ahead! It\u2019s you\u2019re life. I\u2019m not going to sit here and tell you what to do. I\u2019m certainly not going to go to the government and demand that they do something to stop it. ‘Brink Lindsey, author of the new book ‘The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America\u2019s Politics and Culture\u2019, says that a growing number of Americans agree. They are increasingly tolerant of other people while still holding firm values of their own. Lindsey writes at the Cato Institute website: ‘Core commitments to family, work, and country remain strong, but they are tempered by broadminded tolerance of the country\u2019s diversity and a deep humility about telling others how they should live.\u2019 I bet that\u2019s true. I think in the true sense of the word, the vast majority of people are optimistic and positive, at least some of the time, but they probably are telling others, ‘Go ahead and live your life.\u2019 It\u2019s a small number of liberals, mostly in government, and the think tanks and so forth, and in the Drive-By Media, that are telling each and every one of us how we have to live and what we can and can\u2019t do and what we should and shouldn\u2019t do and so forth. But because their beliefs are also shared by those in the Drive-By Media, it gets amplified. <\/p>\n

‘Lindsey, whose book is getting favorable attention in The New York Times, The Economist, Los Angeles Times, Times of London and National Review, is not the first to point this out, but he emphasizes that the ‘live and let live\u2019 ethic arose only when material security could be taken for granted. As people worried less about where their next meal would come from, they had time to contemplate and develop more enlightened attitudes.\u2019 Amen! ”American capitalism is derided for its superficial banality, yet it has unleashed profound, convulsive social change,\u2019 he writes…. Relative freedom and the astounding prosperity it yielded have created one of the most humane societies in history — the opposite of what the opponents of economic freedom predicted. This affluence isn\u2019t just for the ‘rich.\u2019 As Lindsey told [John Stossel] recently, ‘Ordinary Americans, not just those at the top, enjoy a standard of living unmatched anywhere else on earth or at any other time.” Amen! I always love having my instincts and my knowledge confirmed, and here is another example. ‘But many Americans don\u2019t believe it,\u2019 is the next paragraph from Stossel. <\/p>\n

‘The New York Times suggests that politicians win votes by ‘talking more and more about the anemic growth in American wages and the negative effects of trade and a globalized economy on American jobs.\u2019 And Sen. Hillary Clinton, whom the leading London betting site has as a remarkable 1-1 favorite, mourns the ‘rising inequality and rising pessimism.\u2019 No wonder so many of us think life is getting worse. But that\u2019s nonsense. Average wages are up. Last month, America created 132,000 new jobs. In the last four years, America created 8.2 million jobs. Much of the world is desperate to immigrate to America. … The personal pursuit of happiness is a good thing, particularly when it makes everyone better off, too.\u2019 Now, I had a story in yesterday\u2019s stack, actually a column by David Brooks, and there are some statistics in his column that back up the assertions made here in Stossel\u2019s column. Brooks\u2019 piece is entitled, ‘A Reality Based Economy.\u2019 Let me summarize this for you. Between 1991 and 2005, the bottom fifth quintile of wage earners increased their wages and their earnings by 80%. The top quintile, the rich, increased by 50%. For those of you in Rio Linda, let me explain this ‘quintile\u2019 business. I understand it can be confusing. For the purposes of statistics, the government and economists divide wages and income in this country into five quintiles, five areas. <\/p>\n

In the bottom quintile is the poor, the highest quintile is the rich, and people move in and out of these quintiles all the time, make a lot of money one year, next year you get fired and you don\u2019t make any money. Even people in poverty are not born to it, stay to it. It\u2019s not a constant thing for some. They move in and out. But the point is the bottom quintile, the bottom of fifth increased their earnings by 80% between 1991 and 2005. The rich, in the meantime, increased theirs by 50%. Inequality rises as businesses reward more productive workers, and those who earn more also work more. What would John Edwards say about this? This is simple mathematics and simple common sense. The inequality does not result from bias or discrimination or the rich taking care of each other. Inequality rises as businesses reward more productive workers. They pay them more, and those who earn more also work more. So it\u2019s a cycle that keeps repeating. Those who don\u2019t, well, they don\u2019t move up. But it\u2019s not the fault of capitalism. It\u2019s not the fault of the basic inequities of the design. It\u2019s simply the way human nature works. He goes on to point out here that this economy is going great guns and if you want to take your stab at your piece of the American dream, it\u2019s out there and waiting for you. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: This is Sue in Boone, North Carolina. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Even though I have 24\/7, I arrange my day around listening to your show.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I appreciate that. Can\u2019t thank you enough.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, I do think about what you say on a daily basis as I\u2019m just doing my regular things, and we are — I think we\u2019re so blessed in this country. We take it for granted. I went to buy a simple thing like pudding the other day —<\/p>\n

RUSH: Pudding.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Pudding, just Jell-O pudding, I hadn\u2019t bought it in years, my husband was sick, I thought that would help him, you know, feel better. It took me like five or ten minutes to find the kind of pudding I wanted, there were so many different kinds, different flavors —<\/p>\n

RUSH: We are talking abundance.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I mean it\u2019s —<\/p>\n

RUSH: There was abundance of choice, and you had so many choices, it was difficult to choose one.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And so that told you what?<\/p>\n

CALLER: It told me that we are just — every day I think how lucky I am just to have been born in this country. I mean just starting out with that, that I wasn\u2019t born in Ethiopia or India or Afghanistan. I mean just the fact that I was born here, what a leg up that gave me.<\/p>\n

RUSH: You know, I remember watching when I was a kid, Ernie Banks\u2019 retirement ceremony at Wrigley Field in Chicago, watching it on television Saturday afternoon, one of the CBS games, Dizzy Dean might have still been doing games, I\u2019m not sure, but I don\u2019t remember the announcers. I just remember Ernie Banks. And he was standing at the microphone, they were at home plate, and he said I — first off, I want to thank God for making me an American. And I\u2019ve never forgotten that. That\u2019s what you just said in your own words.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, if you\u2019ve ever read Ozzie Smith\u2019s induction to the Hall of Fame speech, he talks about, you know, being poor and what he did to achieve what he has achieved.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Right.<\/p>\n

RUSH: And it\u2019s an amazing speech. In fact, I copied it out and sent it to all my kids, talked about making a glove out of a paper bag.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Sue, thanks for the call, I\u2019m out of time, but I appreciate very much that you\u2019re out there. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: As you people know, I constantly try to focus on positive aspects of life because we\u2019re so inundated daily by the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party with pessimism and doom and gloom. There is a column today. John Stossel has it at RealClearPolitics.com. ‘Good News: The World Gets Better.\u2019 You know, one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica Has Never Had It Better - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/25\/america_has_never_had_it_better\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"America Has Never Had It Better - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: As you people know, I constantly try to focus on positive aspects of life because we\u2019re so inundated daily by the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party with pessimism and doom and gloom. 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