RUSH: Now, I don’t want to belabor the point, because I think I’ve made the point about the hypocrisy and these people in the midst of this income inequality. The reason, folks, it’s important is because this administration, this regime, likes very much what’s in this idiot Picketty’s book and this book is the kind of thing they can point to and say, “Hey, this is a scholar,” just like a global warming scholar or any other kind of scientist. And they say, “We’ve got empirical evidence here this is what we ought to do.” And they’re going to start raising taxes on people and they’re going to start destroying wealth.
They’re not only going to destroy wealth creation, they are going to take wealth away from people after they’ve created it. That’s their objective. That is their end game. But while they’re doing it, they exempt themselves as evidenced by Marlo Thomas and her clucking hen group at Michael’s and this self-help book at age 70 and new vistas in life, and so forth. How in the world can you even be thinking about that if you really believe in income equality? Because if you’re Marlo Thomas married to Phil Donahue, majordomo and Vladimir Posner has a guest room, you gotta be looking at downsizing in the Obama world of income equality, because I guarantee you Obama isn’t looking to raise anybody’s income. That’s the tragedy. Everybody’s income is going to shrink except his, except his buddies. Somehow they’re exempted. And I just wish more people would notice.
Now, I mentioned this Picketty guy yesterday, the French Marxist economist. There’s also some work that’s been produced that is more important, that’s more right on the money and it’s much more relevant and worthwhile than anything Picketty has done. It’s by professor Mark R. Rank of Washington University. He’s the co-author of Chasing the American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our Fortunes. He has surveyed the United States in a much different way than Picketty did.
What Picketty did was basically go back to the 18th century and move forward and he treated the one percent as though they were the same people, the same families. They never changed, the people in the top 10 percent were always in the top 10 percent. The top 20 percent were always in the top 20 percent. And this happens to be common. The socialist view of a capitalist society is that the one percent is common and static and unique. And the five percent, common static, unique. And the 10 percent, ditto, and so forth. And that nobody ever leaves the group that they’re in.
So the poor are always poor and the middle class are always middle class and getting poorer. And the money somehow just magically just siphons up to these rich people. And that’s not the truth of the United States of America. It’s the exact opposite. And that’s what the work that Mr. Rank has produced has found. See, the Picketty book rests on some supporting principles, social and economic mobility do not exist. In his view of the United States, if you’re born a pauper, you die one. If you’re born a sewage worker, you die one. If you’re born a bricklayer, you die one. If you’re born a Kennedy, you die one. If you’re born a Rockefeller, you die one. And if you’re born a Rockefeller, you don’t let anybody else in the house. And if you’re born a Kennedy — of course they’re exempted because they give some of their money away, they’re good Democrats.
But their view of the country is really what is more the case in India, a caste system. And that’s not what we have here. We have a burgeoning class system where people move into and out of various income groups many times in their lives. And it’s all because people are different. It’s all because they have different ambitions and desires at different times in their lives. Some people don’t discover until they’re 40 what they love. Some people know at age 20 what they love, but they have a job they can’t leave for a number of reasons so they can’t do what they love, and they have to stay at the job that they hate and eventually maybe they get laid off or fired from that job and by virtue of necessity, since there’s nothing else, they have to go do what they love. And for the first time in their lives they’re happy.
At age 40, may not have anything at the moment, but they love what they’re doing. They’re finally doing what they’re doing, and they’re happy and they’re loving it. And they’re spending all their time at it and it may pay off and it may not. This goes on all the time in this country. The degree of entrepreneurship and creativity, you can’t hold it back. You can’t quantify it. You can’t categorize it. You can’t tamp it down, despite the best efforts of people like Obama. They try. The leftists have tried for decade after decade after decade, but people are people. The thing that worries me is we’ve got these burgeoning young people, the millennials now, they’re the new young generation, when they lose faith in the America that makes all that I just described possible, that’s bad.
They need to be losing faith in Obama, not America. But because their education is not sufficient politically, they don’t understand that Obama is why America is where it is right now, not America is flawed, deeply flawed. America, this was bound to happen because America was a mistake. That’s what they’ve been taught and Obama is reinforcing that. No, America is fine and dandy, it’s the greatest place ever devised by mankind and Obama is the single handed agent that’s trying to screw it up. And it’s worth our while to try to get to these people and grab them by their shoulders and tell them no, don’t lose faith in your country. It’s the biggest mistake in the world you can make, because while you lose faith in your country a bunch of people that haven’t heard the message are going to be out there running rings around you.
They’ll be inventing things, creating things, they’re going to be working, they’re going to be happy, doing things that you don’t think are possible anymore because you’re investing in a guy and they’re investing in themselves. And that’s the difference. If you want to invest in a guy, invest in you. Don’t invest in a Barack Obama. Don’t invest in a me. Invest in yourself. That’s what America allows you to do. America allows you to love yourself. America allows you to think you’re the greatest thing on earth. America allows you to have confidence and bravado. America allows you the opportunity to put what you think is best on trial and see if it flies.
It’s always been what America is about. And while some young people may get talked out of trying, a lot of people are not going to get that message because they don’t watch the news, they don’t watch TMZ. They don’t watch or read Yahoo!. They’re just going to get up and go do what they want to do. They’re not playing video games all day. Or if they are, they’re writing the games and they’re trying to make money off of it. It’s a crying shame that people are losing faith in the United States of America. We have a man who is a failure as a president and it’s perfectly fine to lose faith in him but not this country. This country, we’re at a crossroads now that it’s not been in in my lifetime, but we’re going to survive it. But it means we’re going to have to survive three years of this guy and the kind of people he’s put in power in his administration.
These people believe that social and economic mobility don’t exist anymore. You’re stuck, however you’re born, that’s your lot in life; that there is no more economic expansion. The days of economic growth, they’re over. The rich got all the money and there isn’t anymore for you to get. The Koch brothers have it all and the Forbes have it all, whoever the rich people, they have it all. And you don’t have it. You don’t have a chance of getting it. All you can do is hope that the Democrats take care of you.
You’re being governed by people who believe that you should be allowed to have money and property in the type and the amount that the state is willing to allow because the state knows best what you need and the state is better able to corral what you need and measure with what you want to keep you happy. And that’s what this book that these guys are going nuts about celebrates as well.
You’re being led by people from the president on down who think that being paid according to the value you bring to an organization is unfair. Stop and think about it. Barack Obama, Jack Lew, Jay Carney, take your pick, Joe Biden, they all believe that being paid according to the value you bring to an organization is not fair. You know why? Because not everybody can bring the same value as you do. You have an unfair advantage and you shouldn’t make more money than somebody because of that.
They’re just as good a person as you. They may not be as talented. They may not be as creative, but they shouldn’t be punished for that. They also believe, and check the landscape of the country to see if this is happening, they also believe that people will work just as hard for very little money as they will for a lot of money. They really believe that. If you give them health care with their small salary, they’ll work just as hard. These people do not know you. They do not know this country. They think they do. And they’re ruining it. They’re destroying it.