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Can a Nation Survive on Charity? · I Believe

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to I Believe, where we talk about governance and philosophy in America.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Joel Douglas, and I believe in America.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for joining me.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_05: Act one, Andrew Carnegie.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: It's 1892, Homestead, Pennsylvania.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: Andrew Carnegie pays his steelworkers an average of$1.68 a day.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: About$56 in today's money.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_05: Twelve hour shifts, six days a week.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_05: The workers and their families shared rooms that smelled like smoke and steel dust.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: The beds were never cold because workers on different shifts all used them.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: They ate bread, onions, sometimes meat.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_05: The lucky ones had shoes that fit.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_05: Nutrition, sanitation, and health were poor.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_05: Workplace injuries were common.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_05: Meanwhile, Carnegie's personal annual income in eighteen ninety two was approximately twenty five million dollars.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: That's eight hundred thirty million dollars in today's dollars per year.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_05: Here's a simple question.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_05: Why didn't he just pay the workers more?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_05: Not out of charity or kindness.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_05: Just pay them enough that they didn't have to send their children to work at age ten.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_05: Pay them enough that they could afford doctors when they got injured.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_05: Pay them enough that their widows didn't end up in poor houses.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_05: Carnegie's answer, laid out in his eighteen eighty nine essay The Gospel of Wealth, was surprisingly direct.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: He argued that giving workers higher wages would be wasteful.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_05: Most workers lacked the judgment to use extra money wisely.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: They'd spend it on alcohol, gambling, and frivolous consumption.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_05: He wrote It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than spent to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_05: Better, Carnegie said, to keep wages low, accumulate wealth, and then give it away strategically, to libraries or universities, institutions that would uplift the deserving poor, not reward the undeserving.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_05: Were his workers not deserving?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_05: But in the case of Carnegie, it was also something deeper, a theory about the nature of giving, about the difference between waste and virtue.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's test the logic.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: In 1892, Carnegie Steele employed about 40,000 workers across all operations.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: If Carnegie had taken just$5 million of his$25 million annual income and distributed it evenly among those workers, each one would have received an extra$125 per year, about$4,300 today.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's not life-changing money.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it's enough to buy winter coats for your kids.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Enough to see a doctor instead of dying from an infected cut.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Enough to not send your 12-year-old to work in the mill.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: But Carnegie didn't do that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, over his lifetime, he gave away$350 million to build libraries, concert halls, and universities.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: He gave 2,811 libraries to communities.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the next question.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Why did he consider the second option virtuous, but the first wasteful?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: A worker who needs$2 a day to feed his family needs it, whether you hand it to him on Friday or donate it to a library that his grandchildren might use.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We all need heat in the house and food on the table.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The need doesn't change.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Only the giver's relationship to it does.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_05: There's an old idea, older than Carnegie, older than America, that we owe two kinds of debts.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_05: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_05: First, our debt to Caesar.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_05: This debt is civic.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_05: What we owe to the state, to the community, to the infrastructure that makes our lives possible.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_05: Roads, courts, defense, clean water.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_05: We pool our resources to build what none of us can build alone.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_05: The other debt is moral.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_05: What we owe to each other as human beings, compassion, dignity, the recognition that suffering is real and we have some responsibility to ease it.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_05: The civic debt is the price of civilization.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_05: We choose to escape chaos.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_05: We pay taxes because without a functioning state, there is no property to protect, no contracts to enforce, no prosperity to enjoy.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_05: The moral debt is civic friendship, the sense that we share a common life and therefore share some responsibility for each other's welfare, our neighbors, communities churches.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_05: For most of human history, these debts lived in separate accounts.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_05: We paid taxes to keep the state running.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_05: We gave alms to benefit those around us in our communities.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_05: One was mandatory, one was voluntary, one was civic duty, one was personal virtue.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_05: They didn't compete with each other.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then something changed.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: By the late 1800s, charity wasn't just feeding a beggar on the street corner anymore.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was building hospitals, funding schools, running orphanages, feeding entire cities during economic panics.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And government wasn't just maintaining roads anymore.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: A series of economic depressions and rapid industrial revolution brought a dramatic increase in individual and community needs.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: People started to ask, what if the state could do what charity does, but bigger, more reliably for everyone?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the two debts started to overlap.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: State duty and civic duty blended together.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Blending the two brought philosophical questions.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: If the government funds hospitals through taxes, do we still need to donate to hospitals?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: If the state provides old age pensions, does that make personal charity for the elderly obsolete?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: If the government takes care of the poor through mandatory taxes, does that rob us of the opportunity to be virtuous?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_05: There's an argument that an act is only morally praiseworthy if it's done freely, out of genuine choice, not out of compulsion.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_05: That we should voluntarily give in secret.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_05: By that logic, paying taxes to fund welfare isn't a moral act, it's just compliance.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_05: But choosing to donate to a soup kitchen is virtue, proof of your moral character.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_05: Carnegie never framed it in philosophical terms, but his entire worldview rested on keeping those two debts separate.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_05: The civic debt, what we owe the state, should be minimal.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: Low taxes, limited government, just enough to keep order and protect property.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_05: The moral debt, what we owe our fellow man, should be voluntary, personal, strategic.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_05: We give when and how we see fit.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_05: And most importantly, the moral debt is where virtue lives.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_05: But there's a problem with this framework.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_05: It only works if we assume that our wealth is our own to begin with.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_05: What if our wealth is civic obligation?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_05: What if the wages we don't pay, the safety equipment we don't buy, the unions we crush weren't private business decisions?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_05: What if they are civic failures?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_05: Then our philanthropy isn't generosity.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_05: We are just hurting our neighbors in the name of virtue.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, we spend about$3.7 trillion on what we call government social programs.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: These are programs like Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's roughly 12% of GDP.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Americans prefer smaller government and lower taxes, but at the same time support programs like Social Security and Medicare.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the tension isn't really about whether government should help people, but about how we want to frame that help and whether we get credit for it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because charity is more efficient.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Government programs have competitive or lower costs than private charities.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Medicare's administrative costs are competitive or better than private health insurance overhead at 12 to 18%.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not because charity reaches more people.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Snap alone feeds 42 million Americans.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Feeding America's Charity Network serves about 50 million people annually, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: One program doesn't dwarf the other.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So is charity better?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Some are convinced that only voluntary giving counts as virtue.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Paying taxes, even if that money feeds hungry children, is obligation.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Donating to a food bank is morality.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Same outcome.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Different emotional accounting.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's research on this from blood donation systems.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you compare voluntary donation to paid systems, people value their donated blood more highly.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: The gift matters because it is a gift.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Payment turns a moral act into a transaction.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: We do the same thing with charity versus taxes.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Taxes feel like payment for services.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Charity feels like a gift, and we reserve our sense of virtue for the gift.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: When Carnegie built his libraries, he put his name on them.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not only because he was vain, he sought to demonstrate personal virtue.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: To show that he, Andrew Carnegie, chose to help.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_05: Carnegie refused.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_05: It was obligation.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_05: It's what he owed workers for their labor, but he thought his workers would just waste their money.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: He wanted to give, on his terms, in his time, to causes he deemed worthy.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_05: Carnegie told himself his wealth was earned purely through genius.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_05: His philanthropy led him keep believing that lie.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_05: July sixth, Henry Clay Frick, Carnegie's right hand man, brought in three hundred armed Pinkertons.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_05: The battle lasted fourteen hours.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_05: Ten men died.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_05: He breaks a strike, destroys the Union, and twenty seven years later, Andrew Carnegie died having given away three hundred and fifty million dollars to libraries, universities, and concert halls.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_05: We remember Carnegie, the philanthropist.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_05: We forget Carnegie, the draconian union buster.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: Carnegie proved at Homestead that charity alone doesn't work.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: When helping people is voluntary, some people simply don't get help.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Carnegie chose libraries over living wages.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: He chose concert halls over safety equipment.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: He chose universities over unions.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: He decided who deserved help, and his workers didn't make the list.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Charity only works when people feel generous, and Carnegie didn't feel generous toward the men who made him rich.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: So forty years later, when the Great Depression hit and the soup line stretched around the block, America made a different choice.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: We pivoted.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: If charity fails when it's voluntary, maybe helping our neighbors needs to be mandatory.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_04: Act two The New Deal.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_04: Only on november twenty third, nineteen fifty-four, did the Dow Jones industrial average climb back to its nineteen twenty nine peak.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_04: Within four years from the crash, twenty-five percent of Americans were unemployed.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_04: In manufacturing heavy cities like Detroit and Chicago, unemployment reached forty percent.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: Soup lines stretched around city blocks.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_04: Families slept in cars.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: Children went to school hungry.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_04: The charities collapsed.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_04: Churches ran out of food by 1931.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: Community funds dried up.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_04: The philanthropists who built hospitals in the 1920s couldn't make payroll in the 1930s.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_04: Carnegie's libraries still stood.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_04: Beautiful buildings, his name carved in stone above the doors.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: Not one of them fed a hungry child.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: March 1933.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Franklin Roosevelt became president.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: In his first hundred days, he launched the New Deal, Federal Work Programs, Unemployment Insurance, and in 1935, the Social Security Act.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: For the first time in American history, old age insurance became mandatory.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Not dependent on charity, not based on who deserved it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: You work, you pay in, you get benefits when you're old.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: No application and no judgment, no Carnegie deciding if you're worthy.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Roosevelt's position in 1932, before he was even president, was aid must be extended by the government, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of social duty.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't reject private charity entirely.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: He said when private charity fails at scale, the state must step in.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Translation.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: Carnegie was wrong.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_04: America chose a different path in 1935.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_04: We took the moral debt and made it civic.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_04: Helping the elderly wasn't charity anymore.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_04: It was obligation.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: Feeding children wasn't generosity.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_04: It became law.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: You don't get credit for it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: You don't get your name on a building.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_04: You just pay your taxes and the system works.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: And it did work.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: Elderly poverty dropped from 50% in nineteen thirty five to under ten percent by nineteen ninety five.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: Millions of people retired without becoming destitute.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: Social Security became the most popular government program in American history.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_04: Then came Medicare in nineteen sixty five, Medicaid in nineteen sixty five, food stamps in nineteen sixty-four, renamed SNAP in 2008.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_04: The mandatory system expanded.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: More people got help.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: Fewer people starved.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_04: Carnegie's model failed at scale.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_04: FDR's model succeeded.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: But some never accepted it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: From day one, some called Social Security Socialist.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: Medicare was government overreach.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Snap was dependency.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: The argument never changed.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: This should be voluntary, not mandatory.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is the government replacing virtue with bureaucracy, theft disguised as compassion.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: FDR made helping mandatory, but he couldn't make believing in it mandatory.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we built a system that half the country thinks shouldn't exist.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: We don't just disagree on funding levels.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Half of us believe the programs are fundamentally illegitimate.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: The other half thinks the system defines morality.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: If you oppose expansion, you hate the poor.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: If you want cuts, you want people to starve.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: So every two years, we fight.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Expand or cut.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Fund or starve.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Save or destroy.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Not policy disagreement, but class warfare.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: And 42 million people wait to see who wins.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: In the Carnegie model, charity is voluntary.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_03: Help who you want, when you want.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Some people don't get help, but nobody's coerced.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: When charity was voluntary, we relied on class hierarchy.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: The rich decided who deserved help.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: The poor were grateful, or they got nothing.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone knew their place.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: In the FDR model, charity is mandatory.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: Help becomes a right, not a gift.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: More people get help, but nobody gets credit.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_03: When we made it mandatory, we created class warfare.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: The rich call it theft, the poor call it rights.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone's enemy is everyone else.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_03: Neither system solved the problem.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_03: Carnegie's way.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Some people starve, but we call it freedom.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: FDR's way.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: Fewer people starve, but we call each other monsters.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Carnegie decided who deserved help.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: FDR made us fight about it for 90 years.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: We don't debate these as policy questions.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: We debate them as moral referendums.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Are you compassionate or are you cruel?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: Are you responsible or are you a socialist?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then, October 1st, 2025.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: While we were still fighting about who deserves help and how much and whether the system should even exist.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_05: Act 3, when both systems fail.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_05: October 1, 2025.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_05: 42 million Americans lose food assistance.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_05: Food banks mobilize.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_05: Donations pour in.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_05: Volunteers show up.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: The system strains but holds.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_05: Then the cracks appear.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Houston Food Bank tries to increase output by 50%.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: They'd need to double it to meet actual need.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: They can't.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Boston food pantries institute two-week waits.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Families with hungry children wait two weeks for food.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Central Texas Food Bank CEO Sari Vatski noted, there is no way that we alone can make up for a$44 million food budget shortfall.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Judith Ingram, a food bank director in Washington, D.C., said, At some point, you cannot count on the community to take over for what should be a government program.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Food banks are in disaster response mode.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But this isn't a localized event.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an earthquake or a hurricane.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: In a natural disaster, other regions send help.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: In a government shutdown, every region is drowning at once.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: We built two systems and told them to compete.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then we acted shocked when both of them lost.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: In October 2025, government failed.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: SNAP stopped.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: 42 million Americans without food assistance.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: Charity tried to fill the gap with private giving, community support, neighbors helping neighbors, but charity only works when people feel generous.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: And people don't feel generous when they're scared about their own money.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: Government programs only work when government works, and right now we have no government.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: Both systems failed simultaneously.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: We have enough food, but we can't get it to anyone because we designed a system that requires constant political consensus to keep working people fed.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: Neither savior, billionaire, or bureaucrat is coming to help.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our constitution's framers understood that governments fail, factions fight, consensus breaks, institutions collapse.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: We can't rely on government too much.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So when they designed the Constitution, they didn't build a system that requires government to work perfectly all the time.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: They built a system where citizens could survive when government stopped functioning.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we protect property rights, why we enforce contracts, why we divide and limit power.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they hated government, but because they knew government would fail, and citizens needed to survive the failure.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Article 1, Section 8, the Spending Clause.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Congress has broad power to spend for the general welfare, emphasis on the general welfare, not particular interests.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Public spending must serve the nation as a whole.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: But half of American working families needing social program support is wildly excessive and points to a systemic failure.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: We've designed an economy where work doesn't cover the cost of living.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: A decisive effort towards closing the gap between what work pays and what life costs.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Only giving the power back to the people survives.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right now, we subsidize low wages with taxpayer money.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Businesses can pay poverty wages because government fills the gap.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: What if the incentive structure rewarded businesses that pay enough that their workers don't need snap?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_03: We don't need more subsidies for affordable housing.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: We need more housing.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: What if we incentivize small businesses and builders to construct starter homes again?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: Remove the barriers that make building affordable housing unprofitable?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Healthcare costs have outpaced inflation for decades.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody has an answer.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: But we know the current system isn't working.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: And subsidizing it through Medicaid doesn't fix it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: It just makes it more expensive for taxpayers.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: The point isn't that government should do nothing.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: The point is that decisive effort matters.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: We can spend one trillion dollars subsidizing poverty wages, unaffordable housing, and broken health care.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Or we can spend that political capital fixing the systems that create the gap in the first place.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: We don't need perfect charity or perfect government.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: We need the people to have enough resources to survive imperfect institutions.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: We built two systems and told them to compete.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: Then we acted shocked when both of them lost.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: But the real failure wasn't charity or government.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: The real failure was building a system that requires dependency instead of enabling capability.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: Our decisive effort should do what the Constitution promised: secure liberty, establish justice, and promote the general welfare, not for one class, but for all working Americans.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: May God bless the United States of America.