RUSH: Fort Payne, Alabama. This is Bill. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve been listening to you since you broadcast from New Orleans during the Mardi Gras in the late eighties.
RUSH: Yeah, that was a fun, fun time.
CALLER: I just wanted to say how great America is, because only in America could I do what I did for ten years, which was play music in Florida, and I was at the poverty line or below, according to the national statistics, but only in America could I make $500 a week doing what I want to do, only working 18 hours a week and go out and party after I got through every night.
RUSH: So you’re a deejay at a club?
CALLER: No, I play sax and sing with a band.
RUSH: Oh, okay. You’re a musician.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: You’re a musician working in those smoky, boozy clubs late at every night, 18 hours a week, 500 bucks a week. You were in the poverty line, and you’re calling to say you had a great time, you enjoyed your life?
CALLER: That’s exactly right. I also have two children that spent six weeks with me every summer, love to come to the beach and I manage to pay my child support and subscribe to The Limbaugh Letter and it’s just a matter of living below your means, living in a small place, and watching what you spend.
RUSH: The man has his priorities straight, folks. Are you still at that level or was that some years ago?
CALLER: That was a few years ago. I play for my own entertainment now. I have a little studio in my basement and I’m in the restaurant business now.
RUSH: Wait a minute. You mean you’re no longer in poverty?
CALLER: No, I’m married to a woman who makes more money than I do.
RUSH: Doesn’t matter. You move out of the poverty. You moved out of the bottom fifth quintile!
CALLER: Yes, I’m up to $80,000 a year.
RUSH: That’s not supposed to happen. Wait, that’s not supposed to happen, if you listen to Democrats, John Edwards, poverty is permanent. You’re born into it. In fact, you shouldn’t be born into it. You should be aborted if you’re conceived to poverty level parents. ‘Nobody should have to grow up and live in horrible circumstances,’ the pro-abort crowd says, and Edwards and this gang would love for everybody to think that poverty’s permanent. Once you’re born to it, you’re in it. People move in and out of differentiates income quintiles constantly throughout their lives.