Latest / CrossPolitic Show / Midweek Fix: In the Home of Walter Williams the Legend | More Biden Racism

Transcript

Midweek Fix: In the Home of Walter Williams the Legend | More Biden Racism · CrossPolitic Show

• Good thank you for letting us come. Okay, we sure appreciate it. We're fans genuine. I kind of feel bad at one sense because I feel like I got a backpack, a Santa Claus backpack of Legos. And I'm just about to dump them all out in front of you and have you put it all together. Yeah. When did you become a Christian? When? Yeah. Well, I've brought up in the Piscqual Church in South Philadelphia. And I think I was confirmed when I was 12. And I don't give a church that much, but, you know, I accept the doctrine. How is like your Christian faith kind of informed your economics? I don't know. I haven't given that much thought. I was just thinking maybe just a voucher not steal. That's all I'm thinking. That's not still. That's what it is. It's got so much about economics. Yeah, well, about Paul about the political arena. Yeah. Yeah. Because most of what government does is take the earnings of one American and give it to another American to whom it does not belong. Right. And most Americans accept that. Right. Right. That's the moral step. Yeah. Because if I did it privately, I'd go to jail. Right. So your money to buy force to go help some farmers or poor people. I'd be accused of robbery. Right. And so when the government does is just legalize robbery. Yeah. Right. And so as you have watched politics develop over your lifetime, especially the Republican party, which is supposed to be the conservative party. What's your take on the current state of the Republican party? Well, I always take positions with some of the governor Wallace. He said it's not down to earth difference between Republicans and Democrats. And except exaggeration. But both of the parties believe in taking your money and my money and giving it to other people. That is, I guess Democrats believe that it's okay to take your money and my money to give to cities and poor people. Right. Republicans think that is your or rate to take your money and my money to give it to farmers and bail out businesses. Yeah. That's right. They both agree on taking our money. They just disagree on what to spend it. So how do you, I mean, did you vote for President Trump? How do you, how do you process who to vote for President Trump? I don't vote. Yeah. Really? Yeah. But I don't vote but I'm not a bad person. At least according to my, my tax forms, I support, I not only by my share of the missiles, but I support for American families. Yeah. And they don't even send me father's day cards. Ouch. So well, then how should we, I mean, should we just not vote? I mean, how? How should you know? No, no, it's okay for you to have. Yeah. Do you ever vote in local elections, even for like local things? No. No, see, see my vote does make a difference. And that is the probability of my vote changing the outcome of an election is probably 10 to the minus 100. Very, very small probability. Right. And some people might say, well, I suppose everybody felt that way. Yeah. Then, then, then I go vote. So it's kind of the rebellion. No, is not everything. Yeah. I just, I just, I just… Would you, would you encourage other people to be like you and that? No. No, you encourage other people to vote. Yeah. Just your conscious itself can't bring yourself to vote. No, I just, yeah. It doesn't really matter. Mm. So, right now, I think, when Obama was running from president, one of the big things that they were pushing was, so many people die for the right for you to be able to vote. Why would you waste, especially as a black man, why would you waste your vote not voting since some of the... Well, the right to vote includes the right not to vote. Right. I mean, that is, you're talking about liberty. That is the right to vote and right not to vote. In some countries it's against the law or not voting. Right. You have these dictators and they brag about getting 100% of the vote. Right. Because people are required to vote. With the gun to their head. Yeah, wow. And so the freedom to vote implies the freedom not to vote. When the freedom... I guess, you know, to be for freedom, you have to be a very brave person. Because you have to accept the fact that some people will behave in ways that you think are improper. Yeah. I mean, the, for example, the true test of one's commitment to free speech does not come when he allows people to be free to say those things with which he agrees. Right. The true test comes when he allows people to say those things that he finds despicable. Yeah. And the same thing with freedom of association. The true test wants commitment to freedom of association doesn't come when he allows people to associate and ways that he thinks. They should. When he allows people to associate and ways that he finds despicable. Yeah. What grade would you give Trump in his first four years as president? Well, in terms of the economics, I give him a... I give him a B. Oh, that's a high-quality one. Wow. That's better than I thought. Well, I think in terms of advocating for the tax cuts, which has enriched our economy, made almost every American better off. And then the deregulation that have gotten government off our backs, gotten a lot of government off our backs, and where I give him a failing grade in economics is the tariffs on foreign goods going into our country. Wasn't that strategic plan for him, though? Well, I don't think so. That is the... If you impose a tariff on, let's say, a car, a Toyota coming in the United States, what it means is that the American buyer of a Toyota pays higher prices. And a lot of people say, well, we will allow... We want tariffs on foreign goods because other countries don't allow our goods to come in there freely. Right. They put restrictions on tariffs on our goods. And so what that's in a sense is saying, well, we're going to screw Americans if other countries screw their citizens. Right. We're going to keep it in the end. What does it make sense? But even like the way I read Trump on the tariffs is that he's using a short-term strategy for long-term changes with, for example, China. For the longest time, we've really created some bad trade deals with China where we're losing in China's winning or it's in balance at minimum. And so something to negotiate is you go in hard, you go in strong, especially with dictators. Schools, you and I were in a boat, in a row boat at sea. And I shoot a hole when you're in my end of the boat. What are you going to do? Not shoot a hole in my end of the boat. Well, that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. That is, as we say, their country. Look, if your government screws you, we're going to get even by screwing our citizens. For example, let's say the case in Canada. Canada has had for a long time tariffs against American dairy products. And that forces Canadians to pay higher prices for cheese, milk, and other dairy products from the United States. Okay. So what should we do in response? That is what a lot of people say, well, let's put tariffs on Canadian wood and Canadian clothing coming out of the United States. And Americans who buy houses or buy clothing, they have to pay higher prices. That's like saying, if Canada screws its citizens, we're going to retaliate by screwing our citizens. I'd rather the people say that, look, we're going to be a free country, open and free country. If you want to screw your citizens to go ahead, we're not going to screw our owners. And I think that a lot of the confusion lies in the fact that people think that one country trades with another. That's not true. It's not the United States Congress trading with the German parliament or the Japanese deit. Right. It's the American citizen. It is me, Walter Williams, through intermediaries, trading with the German producer when I bought an Imercedez. Right. Right. It's not, Congress didn't buy them a say these. Right. I got in deal with a German producer. And so you have to ask the question, what is the moral case for anybody else interfering with my trading with somebody else anywhere in the world? What case can you make for that? I can't find it. It's like, what case can you make for my trading to interfere with my trading with the Rosy store guy at Amnesty? Right. What do you make of the current, the China deal that Trump just signed and the current trade relationship? Well, I don't know that much about it, but whatever reduces tariffs, I think is good for the American people. And then also, I think another thing that we have to realize is that we are a huge country and that is, we depend on foreign goods, though in foreign market, much less than other countries because we have a huge domestic market. And so we can afford to take risks that other countries can't take. And so I think that the basic principle involved is that we have to do those things that support the liberty of the American people, not the liberty of Congress, not the liberty of the President, but your liberty and my liberty. Those are the kind of things that need to be protected. And that's the vision of the founders of our nation. If you read the, if you read the, through the Constitution, it was really a restraint on government, not on people. I mean, if you look at the language, if you look at the language of the Bill of Rights, the language says, Congress shall not abridge, Congress shall not prohibit, Congress shall not disparage. Right. They were a little jumpy. Yeah, the framers say, great distrust for me and I say it's Congress. And I've often often suggested to people that, that when we die and if at our next destination, we see anything like Bill of Rights, we know that we're in hell. Because, because a Bill of Rights in heaven would be an insult to God. Amen. It would be saying that we cannot trust God. Right. You do need a Bill of Rights in hell. You do need it. And if you look at the, take the issue of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment was not written. The founders did not give us the Second Amendment so that we can go deer and duck hunting. That's right. They explicitly said, if you read some of the arguments about at the 1787 Convention in Philadelphia, they explicitly said, we want the American people to be, armed as a last resort against abusive government. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And so, and so the, the, the, the, the Second Amendment is to protect us against the Congress of the United States. Yes. To allow us to have at least some semblance of the ability to protect ourselves. But why, how, how did, how did you get this understanding? I mean, I, I, I, somebody people at higher education, higher academia, are, have all this trust in the government. The government's going to fix it. The government's going to fix it. The government's going to fix it. Just trust the government with a new program. What, what's your background and how did, how did you, how did you come to these conclusions? I, I, well, I mean, you're an academic. You know, I mean, academics, you shouldn't be talking like you should. You should be talking so much sense. I have to say now, damn you lately. Yeah, he is pretty bad. He's pretty bad. He was just with Peter Bergotian and James Lindsay, who did the Hulk's papers. I don't know if you're familiar with that. No, no, no. They basically, the, the journal, what are they called? Peer review journals. Peer review journals. They wrote a bunch of fake journals and submitted them and kind of playing on all the intersectionality stuff and social justice stuff and they were accepted. Got them accepted. There's just pure nonsense. And people start writing articles based off of those faux papers. One, one paper they, they took a Karl Marx's manifesto and substituted feminism language, feminist language throughout. Just changed a few words. Yeah, just changed a couple words here and there and accepted. And they got accepted. I think one of Hitler's two. Yeah, I've been paper by Hitler. Yeah. I mean, that's the state of modern higher education where you can write these nonsense papers and peer review journals to accept them. I'm just trying to find a little bit about what's your background. I mean, how did, how did you make it through that land, you know, gauntlet gauntlet? Well, fortunately, yeah, I've always been a, a radical troublemaker. You know, if you look at autobiography, I had a lot of problems when I was in the military, court martial and that I won and the civil investigation committees on me and people who chased were following my wife around trying to find out whether we were subversives. Because I was a troublemaker. And I think that I, one of the, one of the, the great things that happened in my life is that as I tell people, it may be it's not nice in me to put it this way, that I got, I received most of my education before I became fashionable for white people, to like black people. Yeah. And what that means is that when, when I took a class and I got a, I got a C, there was an honest guy at C that I earned. Oh, and when I got an A, honest guy, A, nobody was getting a damn about my poverty or discrimination stuff like this thing honest with me. And, and I think that that was a great benefit. I got my doctor from UCLA in 1972. And in 1969 or 1960, yeah, 1969, 1968, I took the PhD, I written exam at UCLA. And UCLA is one of the top 12 schools in the economic department in the country at the time. And 14 people took the exam and I believe 12 flunked. Wow. And I went, and I was among the ones that flunked. And I went to the committee to see whether I'd be thrown out of the program and Axel Lannford, one of the professors in the committee, he said, well, your exam was among the words. But we think that you can do better. And so they gave me all kinds of reading assignments. And next time I'm stuck to the exam, I passed. But the point is, is that they didn't give a damn about whether I was black or white, polka die, that, et cetera, et cetera. And so they had the same expectations of me as the other students. Now, if I had gone to Harvard, Yale, or Berkeley, those more liberal schools, they might have felt sorry. They might have felt sorry about the racial discrimination, the carbon, and giving me a break. But I would not have been as good an economist. Wow. Wow. So I was fortunate, as I said earlier, that I was fortunate in receiving virtually all of my education before it became fashionable for white people, like black people. Wow. Wow. So do you think that culturally has hurt black people? Yes, yes. I think that when you, things like affirmative action, a diversity and inclusion, all these things where you give people, you actually lower the standards for people. I think that, in the long run, that does them harm. But when you look at the workforce now, compared to the workforce 30, 40 years ago, we have way more black people in the workforce now than we ever had before. We have higher education, black people than we ever had before. So many of my friends would point to affirmative action as working really well. And the only places that we see it where black people are is because affirmative action isn't working in those fields. So it seemed like those have opened up more doors for black people than it's actually hurt black people. Well, if you look at the, if you just look at some of the statistics around and you look at the very fact that black kids who have a high school diploma, a large percentage, I think it's well over 70%. Many of them cannot read and write at the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade level. Right. They're given fraudulent diplomas. And if you look at education in our country, even for white people, there's nothing really to write home about. But it's a disaster for black people. I mean, and to show you, to give me an idea of the disaster is that it turns out that across the nation, incoming college freshmen, slightly under 50%, require remedial English, remedial math, and remedial writing. So that says, and they're high school graduates. So that says that something is wrong with the diploma that they got. Yeah. If you look at a city like Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland, it turns out, and this is in some of my columns and other research by other people, it turns out that in some schools, some high schools, not a single student tested proficient in math. Wow. And in some cases, only 6% while tested proficient in English. But nonetheless, 70% graduate. And they're given their diploma. That's because they're not giving us enough money to educate our kids. No. No. No. Dr. Williams, they're following for that. We have more money. We can have more money. We have smarter kids, right? Yeah. Well, I think Baltimore and Washington, and they see, they're the cities with, I believe, they might, and they're the top five, spending jurisdictions on education. I think Washington gets 29,000 per kid. Oh, wow. 29,000 per kid. Wow. Wow. And that's a lot of work. And so I'm very sure that the people in the education department in Washington, they see they're hoping that Mississippi does not succeed from the Union. And the reason why, if they did, they'd be the worst in the country in terms of academic achievement. Wow. I mean, it's really bad. So we're big proponents of defunding public education. Basically, I have no problem with public education. I have all my problems with public education is the government funding it. And well, I think that we shouldn't call it public education as a government education. Amen. I'll give you often on that one. And the reason is that the public doesn't have a whole lot to do with education. Run by bureaucrats. That's right. Right. And it's a discipleship program too. Yeah. Right. Well, and yeah, not only are they doing a poor job in basic education, English mathematics and so on, but it's training them in liberal. And indoctrination. Absolutely. And when I sit down with the Republican, you know, Senator or Legislator or candidate, I ask them about why are you funding public education? Because what you're doing is Republican is you're funding a whole system that is teaching people to vote Democrat when they graduate. You're funding something that's going to vote you out of office eventually. Well, related to some of this, like affirmative action, you know, valuing diversity over competence. This kind of thing is minimum wage laws. You know, over and over again, people claim this is how you help the poor. You help the poor by minimum wage laws. You've written a lot on this. Why don't minimum wage laws actually help the poor? Well, it's a, I think what one has to start off asking is what is the effect of the minimum wage law? And you see the effect of the minimum wage law, if you put yourself in the place of an employer, and you must pay $7.25 an hour to no matter whom you hire. Right. Then ask yourself the question, will you hire that worker who is so unfortunate, so as to have skills that would only enable him to produce $4 an hour worth of value? That is pay $7.25 for someone who can only produce $4 worth of value an hour because of poor education and lack of skills. And so for the, a profit-making employer, he's not going to do that. So the impact of the minimum wage law is to discriminate against the employment of low skilled people. Now, if you could pay somebody $4 an hour, then that person would have a job, he could get a job, and most of us get to upgrade our skills through on the job training. And he could eventually learn things to make a more valuable worker in the future. And then also another impact of the minimum wage law that people don't know, people don't express at all. And that is the minimum wage law is one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of races throughout mankind's history. Wow, look at that. And I discovered that. If you look at my book, it's called South Africa's War Against Capitalism. And a number of years ago, I spent time in South Africa. I spent several times in South Africa and doing research in labor markets. And it turns out that white races unions in South Africa were the major supporters of minimum wage laws for blacks. And their stated reason is that we want higher mandated laws. They call the rate for the job law there. Higher minimum wage laws to protect white workers from having to compete with low-skill, low-wage black workers. Wow. For example, on a construction project, I think in 1971, the average wage that a white worker got for a manual labor, just a general labor, on-skill labor was $1.91 an hour. The employer could hire a black worker to do the same thing, 39 cents an hour. Oh, wow. So what was the employer's incentives to hire the black worker? Right. But however, if you could mandate that the employer paid the black worker and the white worker the same wage, then the worker would have reduced incentive. Right. And the employer would have a reduced incentive to hire the black worker. But that South Africa weren't America and our minimum wage is kind and charitable. No, no, no, no, no. How's our minimum wage looking at our first minimum wage in our country? As written in 1931, it's called the Davis-Bacon Act. And what the Davis-Bacon Act did, it mandated it on all federally finance or assisted construction projects, the prevailing wage must be paid. And the prevailing wage, the Department of Labor determines it to be the union wage or hire. And if you read through the legislative debate on the Davis-Bacon Act, or mainly page 65, 13 of the Congressional Record in March 31, 1931, just read that where the congressmen are debating about the minimum wage, you'll see that congressmen are all good. And some others say things like, see that contractor over there, he brings cheap colored labor up, puts them in cabins, and his labor of that sort that's competing with American whites. Oh. And this is why we need a Davis-Bacon Act. Wow. That was when the South construction workers were coming up to the North, right? Yeah, that's right. They were out working them in the day and the night and the price was comparable. I remember that. Yeah, that's right. And so what the, and what, what after Davis-Bacon Act, blacks were virtually removed from the construction industry in the North. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. There's the North. So fast forward, how are minimum wage laws still racially connected? Well, because if you say, well, who are the low skilled workers in the American labor force, well, the most for the most part, they tend to be teenagers. Uh-huh. Teenagers are low skilled because they lack the matured in experience of adults. Right. Among the teenagers are black teenagers. They not only share the handicaps with teenagers in general, but they also share the additional handicaps of right and schools, families, poor neighborhoods. Right. So they're going to be the lowest of the low skilled workers. Yeah. And so they meant, if the, if the minimum wage law is going to discriminate against the employment of low skilled workers, it will have a heavier impact on black low skilled workers than white low skilled workers. And so now that's not, that's, and that's just that doesn't have anything to do with the intention. That, and that's a, that's in addition to the racially discriminatory effect of the minimum wage law. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, think about it this way. If you have a mandated minimum price, or anything, it discriminates against the least preferred. For example, as you said, suppose you, suppose we had a mandated minimum price on stake. Yeah. And so you had to pay a $15 a pound for filet manual and $15 a pound for chuck steak. Yeah. What would you buy? You're on the phone right here. And so that would discriminate against the less preferred stake, right? Namely the chuck steak. Right. And the only way the chuck, only way chuck steak competes with filet manual today is that it goes for a little bit. Is that it goes for lower price? Right. And if you can't allow it to go for lower price, you can see it gone. You, you, you, you, you, you're given hand or think of another way. It's suppose I would ask you, suppose you see a fat old ugly cigar smoking man married to a beautiful young lady. What would be your prediction about that man's income? Well, he got a very dope mouthpiece. You got me. You guessed that. It's pretty high. Yeah. And so what is he doing? He's selling the beautiful, he's selling beautiful young lady. Look, I can compete for your hand on the basis of a handsome guy. Right. So I'm going to offset my handicaps, right? By offering you more money. Right. And so suppose somebody said, well, look, is it fair for a beautiful young lady's the charge fat old ugly cigar smoking man married to a young lady? Old ugly cigar smugman higher prices. And you might say, no, it's not fair. So you make a law that beautiful young ladies can't treat fat old ugly cigar smugman any differently than handsome man. Uh-oh. Then what happens to the chances of a fat old cigar smugman marrying a beautiful young lady goes to the search? Yeah. But all the money just rolls up to the top though. By me? All the guys with no money just rolls up to the top though. So you're not working? Yeah. So, a Kasia Cortez, you know, who she is, AOC? Yeah. Uh, she was interviewed by Tonhazi Coats, uh, this last week. And in the interview, she was talking about how billionaires make money off their employees. And how, uh, you know, the employees are actually the ones doing all the work. The billionaires are sitting on couches while the employees are doing all the work. And then yet they end up with a billion dollars. And the employees barely end up with a, barely end up with a living wage as she would define it. And then she summarizes this by saying, and so no one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars. So she basically summarizes by saying those, those owners, the CEOs of the company, they're taking a billion dollars. They aren't making a billion dollars. It's everyone at the ground level who's making, should be making the money. But instead of billionaires, the owners are the ones who are taking the money. How do you, how do you process that? How do you respond to that? No, I think it's a, it's summary. It would be just plain nonsense. You say, well, how do people become rich? Uh, well, in a free market, people become rich by serving their fellow men. They're making your fellow men better off. Right. You say, well, look, how did Bill Gates become one of the richest people in the world? Yeah. Did he, did he, did he do it through robbing people? Right. No, he didn't. He produced windows. Yeah. Something that satisfies people. Yeah. And what people did, they are all around the world. They voluntarily plunked down $400. Yeah. For his windows, you know. Uh, or, or, matter of fact, you can, you can look at, um, you can look at income. People get income by serving their fellow men. That is, you say, look, suppose I, I mow your lawn. Right. And you give me $20 for mowing your lawn. Well, what is that $20? Well, you see what it is when I go to the grocer and I say, I would like to have a six pack of beer and two pounds of steak that my fellow man produced. So the grocer, in fact, says to me, well, Williams, you're making a claim on what your fellow man produced. What did you do to serve him? And that's when I plunked, I showed the $20. Yeah. I served my fellow man by mowing his lawn. And this is proof. This is the evidence, the $20. Right. Now, the difference between government, government can say to me, well, Williams, you don't have to get out in hot sun and mow your fellow man's lawn. We will take his beer and, uh, and steak to give to you. Yeah. And so, so you've asked about the morality of it. Yeah. I think it's a, it's a good, uh, or high standard morality that in order to have a claim on what your fellow man produced, you have to serve your fellow man. Yeah. And when, and, and, and, and, and, and metaphorically, with this whole business of, of, of, of income redistribution and taking people's money. Yeah. You have to think that if you are a Christian, you have to be against that because when God gave Moses the commandment, thou shalt not steal. He didn't mean thou shalt not steal unless you got a majority vote in the United States Congress. You preach it. You meant that you shall just do not steal. And so people become rich by serving the filament. Look at Walmart. Yeah. Well, he didn't rob anybody. He went out there and he, matter of fact, he started out of there as a delivering milk gas on his bicycle. Yeah. Morning. Right. Wow. Delivering newspapers. But he made, with his mind and his willing to stake risk, he made it possible for his fellow man to get a lot of good. You go into Walmart store and it must be at least 100,000 different items. And to find out how to organize, to do all that stuff, that it requires no less than a genius. That's right. But to your Bill Gates situation, Bill Gates invents windows and then all his employees do all the work and Bill gets all the profits and his employees don't get to share on the profits. Well, that's not true, though. That's right. The people who work for, for, for win Microsoft, they earn a lot of money. Yeah. There's janitors at Microsoft that are doing real good. But they don't get to share on the profits. They just get, they just get the wages. Well, well, well, well, yeah, no, they're wages. There's rent. There's profit and there's interest. There are various forms of payments to factors of production that is labor gets wages. And gets rent. Employers, I mean, entrepreneurs get profit and capital gets interest, gets interest. Now, if you look at an entrepreneur, a guy who owns it, let's, let's say I'm hiring you, I run a country, a company, I hire you. Well, I must, I must, you get your wage anyway, regardless what happens to the country, the company. Yeah. But I have to, I'm the residual. I get what's left over. Right. And so if things don't go very well, I don't get anything. You're the one taking the risk. Yeah. Not him. Yeah. And so if you have a downturn year, you're the one that gets down to downturn. You still get your wage. Or you ask, you ask the question, look, you take somebody like Drew Breeze, the quarterback of the Saints. Yeah. The guy gets $40 million a year. And so the people who, who operate the, the machines, they don't get $40 million a year of many other people around that's involved with the Saints organization. They don't get, they don't get that kind of money, but Drew Breeze does. So, so why is the, how come the secretary working for the, the, the New Orleans Saints? Right. He gets 60 or 70,000 a year. Right. And Drew Breeze working for the same company, he gets 40. That's not fair. That is not fair. The referees running down the field just like rest of it. And Drew Breeze could be a quarterback without the referees. Well, but you, but you asked the question here. Yeah. You asked the question, well, if Drew Breeze, if you could get, if the, if the New York, New Orleans Saints could hire somebody with his skills for $100,000 a year, why would they pay him $40 million? Right. That's right. Right. I mean, eating, I mean, and if they didn't pay him $40 million, they find that the New York Giants would have them instead. Yeah. And then what's their, what's their investment now? So, so, so you, you, you look, you, you take a person, um, trying to think of the CEO of, um, Jack Welch of the, uh, of the general electric, yeah, GE. When he came into, when he, when he started the company, right, I believe that they, I don't have to figure right off hand, but I believe that they might have been worth of $5 billion. And when he left, he were worth hundreds of billions of dollars. So, so you have to ask the question, well, a person who has the ability to make a $5 billion company, a $500 billion dollar company, well, he's worth something. Right. Yeah. But, and so, and, matter of fact, I believe he just, he just wound up getting, um, I'm not, I'm not absolutely sure, but it's in a neighborhood of maybe $100 million. Yeah. And, um, I think that's why it's not a, that's why it's not a, that's why it's not a, that's why it's not a, that's why it's not a, that's why it's not a, that's why it's a, that's why it's nonsense, though, is that the difference in the company is Welch. Yeah. He's the one who thought, what does this company need to do? He was working. I mean, I, I think the answer to the fundamental answer to AOC's point is that the entrepreneurs are the ones doing hard work. It's, it's just not true that the day laborers are the only ones working. He's not just sitting on his couch. You don't sit on your couch and magically turn a company from $500 billion. And, and same thing with the, with, with Drew Breeze. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, the, the reason why the secretary is getting $60 or $70,000 a year because of Drew Breeze. He's making the, he's making the saints operation very, very profitable. He is. Why is, why does it seem like, I mean, it just over the last, what, maybe 15 years I can think about, I've seen Bernie Sanders and people like AOC rise to the top. I mean, a couple of lectures ago when Obama was running, Bernie Sanders was a laughing stock of the Democratic Party. And now he's actually competing right now to be possibly a nominee. A nominee. And then AOC is up here in New York. How did that, what's happened that this, we're not viewing this thinking is actually starting to permeate the culture. Well, I think see the, it's, it's a decline in morality of the American people. Oh, that is politicians. We can't blame politicians for, we can blame a little bit. But the both of the blame lies with the American people. That is, politicians are doing precisely what the people who elect them to office want them to do. And so they, and most people are, politicians are elected office on the promise that, on the promise they make that they will use the power of their office to take what belongs to one American and bring it back to them. Wow. That is, and a politician not doing that, he won't get elected office. Yeah. He has a question, suppose I were running for the United States Senate in the state of Pennsylvania, and I go, go across the state campaigning, and I tell my fellow panaceous vaniers, look, I, I know what's in the constitution. If you elect me to the Senate, don't expect from me, bring back highway construction money, aid to higher education, food stamps, and prescription drugs. Now, and the question, because it's not in the constitution. And so the question I have for you is that do you think that I would get elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania? No, I wouldn't. And the, and the Pennsylvanians would be doing exactly the right thing by not electing me to the office, to the Senate, because if I don't bring back as Senator Williams, if I don't bring back billions of dollars to Pennsylvanians, it doesn't mean that Pennsylvanians will pay a lower federal income to all that it means as new juries will get it instead. Yeah. Right. And so once legalized staff begins, there's no stuff. It pays for everybody to participate in it. So everybody's grasping. And those who don't participate in it will wind up holding the brown under the stick. How do you stop that? I don't think you can stop it. Somebody's going to be able to put the brakes in this thing. No, no, no, no. Otherwise, you just keep grasping for just to get yours then, don't you? That's what happens. And so where does this end? Yeah. Well, a lot of people have asked me the question, what can we do? And you have to ask the question, well, I asked them, are the American people as human beings? Are they any different from the Roman, the Spanish, the French, the British? These are great empires of the past who went down the tubes. Yes, sir. Are we any different from them as human beings? And I say no. No, I'm depressed. And so we're headed in the same direction. It seems like the only other possibility is a massive spiritual reformation. Right. No, no, no. And that can't happen because if you look at the church, whether you're Catholic or whether you're a Presbyterian, that does, the message from the pulpit is not that of telling the parishioners, don't take government money. Oh, it's the message is you can stop that. You can take more government money. That's right. That's right. That's right. So I'm saying there's not going to be a religious awakening. And so you know, like think about this, if you were around in 1887 in London, at Queen Victoria's Jubilee, and if you had suggested that Great Britain would become a third-rate nation, challenged on the high seas by a six-rate nation such as Argentina and almost lose, you would have been put into the Insana Sallan because it was inconceivable that Great Britain would become a third-rate nation. It was inconceivable that anybody would challenge Great Britain on the high seas, but nonetheless they did. And the matter of fact is kind of interesting, tell, to me, if the statement used to be that the sun never set on a British prison. Right. And you know, one guy quit. He said, well, the reason why is because God did not trust the British in the dark. So, but great empires in the past have gone down to tubes for doing, and we're doing exactly the same things that they were doing. Britain circuses. Yeah. And there's one thing just from reading the Bible, understand how God works to, there is this sense that there's a prophet that comes forth and God causes a nation to repent. And if there's ever going to be a revival, it's going to have to come from regenerated hearts, believing in God, what he says about the Word, and practicing those things, and then all of a sudden it trickles up from just basic fatleness obedience to the Word of God. And we've seen that so many times in the Word of God, I think you're right, though, if it's going to happen, it's going to come from the first church is saying, hey, let's be self-sufficient, let's be self-sustaining. And we see some of it happening. You see Samaritan Ministries, which is a Christian organization that is trying to figure out, how can we take care of the people among us at health sharing so that if a person gets sick, we send out an email, it goes out and people give money to take care of that person without having to go to the government to get health care. And so we see certain things popping. Little pockets. You see little things. But it's not big enough, man. No, but one thing about God, though, is I always use a small things. He used David and David and Glyat. Well, a guy did not do anything for the Romans, the British, the French. There are judges. There are times where he will flatten a place and then take people out and rebuild again. We've seen that. I'm just hoping that we're in the place where we have revival and that we don't get the monster. There's a point where judgment happens. And I do think, though, that it almost, it always happens, though, in a moment where it's utterly impossible. The kind of reformation that God actually does is the kind where it really isn't possible. It won't add up. It won't make sense. And it could just as easily completely go down the tubes. One of the things I find encouraging, though, is, and it's been in the short time, probably since the early 80s when homeschooling started really getting big. There's been Christians who have decided to take control of education. One thing that they can really get their hands on. And from that era up until now, Christian colleges that have developed, we've seen this kind of Christian uprising and education that I don't think we even know what the outcome is going to be 20 years from now. We've just seen a generation of homeschoolers come into the workforce into technology. They're thinking about things about... Someone will even vote. Yes. Someone will even vote. We don't even know if the outcome is going to be yet of the Christian education has been developing over the last 20, 30 years. And so while we have a group of people that are kind of unplugged and aren't being faithful, there's still this kind of rowdy bunch of group of people who are not willing to give up on what it means to be a faithful father, be a faithful mother, to be a faithful daughter and son, and to be a faithful Christian all the way from their home to their work, to their kids. And we're seeing the fruit of that. And I don't think that it's even hit yet. It's prime. I think we're just seeing the... I think it's still. You go back to your church, your parishioners, and you say, look, the only way you get a social security check is for the government to take the money of those who are working in the workforce and give it to you. That's dishonest. Let's stop it. How much do you think? How much support do you think you would get? Well, there's one church at least tonight, a hoe that's doing that. Our pastor actually teaches that. You know, there's only about a thousand of us, but he's been teaching that for a couple of decades. I mean, but do the... Does the congregation obey? Say, do they say to the social security administration, keep your money. Do they send the checks back? Yes. They don't. Well, at least some of them are. No, no, no, some of them. The principal that our pastor's taught us is, you know, if you start collecting social security, just collect what they owe you for taking your money and then stop taking checks. No, no, no, no, no. That's the work that we... That is... The social security system is a big Ponzi game. Oh, yeah. Oh, I know. The only way that you can get any social security is for the government to take money away from people who are working today and give it to you. Because when the social security administration started in 1933, 36 rather, they said that money that would be taken out of your pay would be... Your money would be put in a special account for you. Right. Oh, yeah. And you could draw on it when you retire. Do you look with that? That is not true at all. Right. Right. So for sure, you recognize that a social security recipient, a person, 65, 70, whatever, the only way that he gets the money from the social security administration is for the government to take the earnings of somebody who's working now. Right. That's right. Yeah, where were we? So it's not getting back the money that you put in. Right. Because the money you put in is gone. Right. That's true. It's gone. And the only way they can give you money is to take money from those who are paying in social security. Right. If this is going down the tubes, why have you done what you've done? Why have you written all the articles you've written, written all the books you've written, taught for as long as you've taught? Nobody's listening. Apparently. What why do what you've done? Because it's fun. This goes back to your rowdy days, huh? You just rowdy. You can't stop the rowdy. I want to ask you, what do you think of the best time for black people in America? What's the best time? What would you mark as being the best time for black people? I say right now. Right now. Even with all the social structures that are there right now that are crippling us, you would say still right now is the best time for black people. Well, yeah, well. It all depends what you use as a measure. Yeah. It says that if you measure income and, let's say, material wealth, then clearly black people today in terms of material wealth are much better off than they've ever been. That is the kind of things that black people, even poor people, black people, or poor people in general, is much higher than years ago. For example, if you look at the statistics from the Census Bureau, 62% of people, who are defined as poor, own at least one car, and 14, own two or more cars, 14%. Poor people today have television, microwaves, wash, regime, air conditioning, cell phones. Cell phones. Right. And, matter of fact, if you're standing on a corner in downtown Philadelphia or downtown anywhere, and someone says, you're just standing there. And just by their appearance, they say to you, would you point out people who are poor walking by and the people who are not poor walking by, you could hardly tell. And so, but years ago, you could. Yep. Here's the good. Now, so what, so in that sense, there's no more poverty in America. That is, there's, I should maybe refine it. I should say, there's no more material poverty, but there's a plenty of spiritual poverty of the day that did not exist. When I was a kid, I'll be, you know, I'm almost 84 years old. But when I was a kid, the kind of things that you saw people do in North Philadelphia, 18 miles from here, were unheard of. I mean, today. Yeah. My father, I deserted my mother and sister, and I went, I was three, and my sister was two. And we lived in the rich, own housing project in North Philadelphia. And we were the only kids in our neighborhood that did not have a mother and a father in the house, two parent house, all. We were the only ones. Wow. Today is exactly the opposite. Yeah. It would be rare to find the foot to the reverse. Right. And it turns out that if you look at the statistics today among black Americans, 75% of black babies are born out of wedlock. If they're born at all. 75% right. And, and in 1938, it was 11%. Wow. Illogidimacy among blacks and 3% among whites. Today is 30, overslight, 30% of whites among whites. The, again, when I was in North Philadelphia and poor in April, it's a, a lot of people didn't bother lock their doors. I had a friend. I just knocked on his door and walked into his house. And on hot human nights, if we were well behaved, maybe we could sleep out on the balcony or sleep out and on lawn furniture, somebody's yard. You won't do, you can't do that today. Yeah. You can get robbed or with. Yeah. That's not safe. Or, or, or things that people, I think one, one of the real tragedies is, is that younger people today. They think things that they see today have always been. Yeah. And it's not true. For example, things, things that you just never think of. I guarantee that none of you would have thought of this. Is the idea at one time, getting on the trolley car bus, you did not have to have exact change. And you gave your, if it was quarter, you gave a guy a conductor, a dollar and he gave you back 75 cents. Well, how come we have exact change now? Was because of all the robberies of, of trolley car drivers and bus drivers that had during the 60s and 70s. The, the whole notion, you know, in Baltimore, in 2015, it's probably the same thing today, that on each school day, an average of four teachers were assaulted, requiring medical. And when I was going to school, I mean, you would never dream of cursing to a teacher, much less assaulting a teacher. You find the guns in school where people are shooting one another in school. Right. And people say, well, gee, we need to do something about guns. Well, guns are in an, in an an object. They can't act on their own. Like to put a gun on a table. Right. It's not going to do anything. Right. It's people who do things. And, and, and, and as an evidence of decline in morality, is that many high schools had, had rifle clubs. Right. Now, through you where kids would actually, you know, in the 1940s and 50s, kids would get on a trolley car with their rifles, take them to the high school because they had rifle clubs. Yep. Yep. Now, any, any principal allowing kids a rifle, you come in school, he would be fired if he's not arrested. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Say it, there's a question, well, have rifles gotten meaner? No, no, no, it's people. Yeah. Again, we, we blame it. We, a lot of times we blame it in an, in an an an object for the problems. And that's not true. It's people all the time. And so there's been a steep, I don't think is recoverable decline in morality. Yeah. I don't think you can ever do anything about it. I mean, if you ask the question or just put it in the case of the, of the rifle club, do you see any hope on the horizon whereby high schools can, can, can once again have a rifle clubs and shooting clubs. Right. Can you see, can you see, can you see it anyway, not humanly speaking? No, no, but, but, but that was traditional. Right. Sure, that's sure. Sure. And, and the, a matter of fact, if you look at, you go to Sears and Robot catalog in 2030. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry. In 1930, 1915, I looked at one, I think with the 1915 or 1920 and had 38 pages of advertisements for guns and rifles. You just, and mail order. Yeah. You send your money away and they will send the, send you at your pistol or gun the rifle or you go to a, a hardware store to buy it. And, and that was at a time it wasn't all this shooting and stuff like this. And they were selling cocaine in those magazines, too. That, that's right. You know, I mean, think about it. Yeah. We have cocaine and guns right there in the same magazine and you still didn't have the same amount of violence. Yeah. And so again, again, can you imagine that we can go back as a nation to, and, and, and, and, where it's seriously robot catalogs or we could, we could just send in our money to buy a pistol. Right. Because that, that's what we've always done as a nation. Right. And, and very often it was, it was very, very common for when a boy reached 12 years old. As far as they would give him 22 rifles. Yeah. My son's getting one. Mm-hmm. You know? And so, so you say, you say, do you see any hope on the rise and for that coming back? Where people were, are moral and self-discipline enough for that to become, and for that to be the case again. Yeah. But the reason why that environment was present in the first place was because the, the, the Christian worldview had a powerful impact a century before, two centuries before. Mm-hmm. You know? Right. And, and the only way that that can get back is through people trusting in Jesus again. You know, Jesus, we believe Jesus is King of Kings, Lord of Lord, and that his death and resurrection really does change the world. And that we, through the gospel being preached, through the repentance of a nation, we can get back there, but it's not possible. But, oh, we can't, we can't make that happen. It's, it's not human. You, you're right. If I just looked at the world through the grid of what humans do, it's depressing. Yeah. If I look at the grid through, through thinking that humans can fix themselves, we're screwed. But if I look at the grid through the world of, of the biblical lens, what Jesus is doing in the world, sure, we go through times in our history where, where things look really dire. We go through, I mean, you know, the, you look at the, the history of the world. The empire's due fall. Yeah. It's slavery actually ended. Peaks and troughs. Right. Look at the history of the world is peaks and troughs. But you do see a, a continuous improvement over time through, throughout centuries. Not necessarily for particular nations. Right. But for the kingdom of God. Right. I mean, on the one hand, our, you know, the West is in heavy decline. But there's reason to believe that, that there's other places in the world where the gospel is actually turning things in a different direction. And I don't know if you've been following like the Hong Kong protests, for example. But it's been striking to us that like, you know, millions of people gathering, asking for freedom from China. Many of whom are singing Christian hymns in the streets. In the streets. And I don't know what's going to come from that. But that seems to me to be maybe the birth of something new over there. Meanwhile, you know, if, if that happened here, you know, I mean, you know, you can imagine that happening. Yeah, there's revostranger that the, in Hong Kong, the, the people are the younger people are fighting against communism. And here they're fighting for exactly. Right. Right. I mean, so I mean, who knows, you know, maybe in, in 50 years, you know, it's, it's Hong Kong or it's a nation in Africa or in Asia where you have a world like you're talking about where the high school kids have shooting clubs. And you can order your pistol off of a, you know, the internet. No questions asked because the gospel is permeated more in that country. But and maybe, you know, and maybe we're going through a dark age here. But the, the gospel disrupts stealing, you know, the gospel disrupts envy, the gospel disrupts greed. The gospel disrupts a society without, without Jesus, without Jesus working in my life, I would want to still, I would want to be greedy. I would want to, you know, hoard all these things for myself. And I would take, I would take whatever power control and mechanisms I have to accomplish that. But it, and that really is a miracle though when, when God does that, it doesn't, it doesn't add up. But it's just as much as, you know, the virgin birth, just as much as, you know, the Exodus through the Red Sea, just as much as Jesus rising from the dead. You, you can't make that happen. We can't make that happen. Only, only God can make that happen. This is why I love you're writing so much is because all real economics is based in scripture. All real good true economics is based in, in how the Bible, how God presents himself to the world. And actually goes back to what you said earlier. I love what you said about the free market is just giving a serving. Serving neighborhood. Are you familiar with George Gilder? No. He was the one that I remember him saying that in some of his writings where he just said the free market economics is just gift giving. And, and then, and then gratitude. You know, when, when, you know, when you moment alone for $20 or whatever, you know, that's just you thanking me. And, but that's, that's the gospel of Jesus. That's, that's, you know, God so loved the world that he gave. And that kind of gift creates gratitude in our hearts and makes us want to be givers. And, and that's, you know, God makes free men. And then in turn free men make free cultures, make free people free people free countries. But the slavery of sin creates more slavery, more coercion, more stealing, more grasping. Also too, I just, as I was thinking about this, man, you've laid a foundation for what has now been known as black's it. You know, are you familiar with that? You're leaving a black people leading Democrat party. Yeah. I mean, if you look at some of the people that are out there between you and Thomas Soul, like you guys have been the foundation for a lot of black people waking up to just voting Democrat, you know, just in their mind because they think. I mean, so I can't look back. This is part of what I know about you and what I read about you and complete disagrees with you. Because I'm seeing the fruit of your work come and start a revolt against the status quo, how black people supposed to think and how monolithic we taught that we are. And so I see, I see your work shaking some of the foundations of that and bringing up a whole new crop of people like Candace Owens out there. I mean, you listen to her. You're like, wow, that's fresh. Well, she didn't, she's only regurgitating the stuff that you and Soul have been putting out. And so I know that because I've read you guys, I know you got that from. And so I got to say, man, I think your own work disagrees with you. What happened in here, I think there is a turn that's coming and I think you've been a huge part of making that happen, brother. And I'm grateful for it. And I think there's a lot, I mean, I also wonder if there's a little bit of an optical illusion between the big cities and the rest of the middle of flyover America. Because there's a lot of us out in Idaho and Oklahoma and South Dakota who, you know, I mean in college, I didn't lock the doors on my car or my house. I do now because I got little kids, but you know, but there's a bunch of people still in the middle of this country. Who I think, you know, whatever you want to call it, red states or whatever, but there, I think a lot of them, I mean, we still need a reformation there. But I think there's still a lot of people who aren't going to go down without a fight. You know, and I think even, even as, you know, wild and crazy as Trump is, there's something about that whole phenomenon that a bunch, you know, the liberals, you know, we're crying on election night, completely shocked. And I think there's something there where, you know, a bunch of people said, look, we're going to, you know, whether it's the middle finger, the middle finger to the elites or whatever you want to call it. Like I do think that there is a rising tide of something. Now, whether it will be enough, whether, you know, we'll go down the tubes and God will do something new. I don't know. But I do agree that there's something going on when you have like, even someone as crazy as Kanye West, where I know you don't want that title. It has to you, but, but, you know, but, you know, well, he's, you know, calling himself a Christian and saying, I'm a vote for whoever I'm going to vote for. He's being an entrepreneur. Yeah. Buying property, buying a bunch of land in Wyoming. Yeah. Thinking through these things. I think something's going on here. We're almost done with our time. So I'm going to give you the last word, man. Just maybe like what, what, what would you want? A younger generation that is, is, is, is read you, listen to you. I don't know. What, what would you say to them? What do you think we need? What would you encourage us in? Well, I, I think in, in, in, in, in just a few words or two, is that we need a moral rejuvenation. And, and I mean, not, not simply from a religious point of view, but from a, a human rights point of view, that is to, to, to, to love and respect our fellow man. And in order to love and respect our fellow man, we can't do things like we've done in the past that is we can't steal from him. We can't use him. We cannot abuse his personal liberties. I think that to promote personal liberty is the most important thing that one can do. And to recognize what's at the heart of personal, personal, liberty. I mean, and, and where I start off in thinking about all many issues is that each of us owns himself. That is, I am my property. I belong to Walter Williams. And if you start off with the notion of self-ponorship, then there are certain acts that are immoral and certain acts are immoral. That is, the reason why rape is immoral is because it violates private property. Murder is immoral because it violates private property. And so, if you start off with the idea of, of a, of a self-ponorship, then I think that the, the, the very tough questions that people, what, what are called tough questions really become easy questions. And that is, if you start off with the idea of self-ponorship, it means that I have the right to engage in peaceable voluntary exchange with anybody around the world. That is, and anybody that would interfere with peaceable voluntary exchange is committing an immoral act. That is, if I want to, if I want to work for you for four dollars an hour, and you want to pay me four dollars an hour, nobody else has a right to interfere with that transaction because you own you and I own me. And so, it will be immoral for, for him to interfere to say, no, that transaction cannot occur. And so, I think that the, that the bottom line is to think of us, of each of us, as, as self-ponorship, at least here on earth, that we own ourselves, nobody else on earth owns us. And that's, and that, that, that gives the rules of the, of the road, you know. And then, another thing that if you, if you think about man's relationship with man, if you look, if you look at, let's say, if you look at the upcoming Super Bowl, now, or you look at your football games, let's forget about the Super Bowl, look at football games in general. Those guys are playing a hard game, a lot's at stake, maybe money, winning, prestige. And the game is over, and they're shaking hands with one another, come now, one another. And, and why? How can they do that? What happens to be the, the rules of the game that is the, the umpires, all that they do is enforce the rule of the game. They don't play favorites, they don't say, well, since Nadi had a bad year, that last year, so we're going to give it an edge. We're going, we're not going to call pass in for interference on them and stuff like that. Right. And so, but that does not happen. Right. They, they treat everybody equally. And so the players can live in peace. Yeah. While a whole lot's at stake. Right. You know, who own who wins and who loses. Right. But nonetheless, they can live in peace. And, and that's, that's why the, the rules of the game or laws need to be neutral and that the courts or the legal authorities should be charged only with enforcing the rules. Right. The enforcing neutral rules. They shouldn't say, well, gee, because of slavery, because discrimination, you had a, you had a bad life, we're going to put you ahead of these other people. You don't do that. What you do is to get rid of the impediments to liberty and then keep on playing the game. And that's how we can get along with one another. And that's what I would say to people. That's good stuff. I got one more question for you. Can you sign my books?