Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/7/25 Thomas Eddlem on the Plutocratic War on the American Working Class

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

Scott interviews Thomas Eddlem about an article he recently published at the Libertarian Institute about how our economic system is ripping off the American working class. He and Scott dig into how inflation, regulations and programs like Social Security hurt the very people most think the government is around to help.  Discussed on the show: “Plutocratic America’s War on the Working Class” (Libertarian Institute) Thomas R. Eddlem is the William Norman Grigg Fellow at the Libertarian Institute, an economist and a freelance writer. He has written three books and holds a masters of applied economics and data scientist certification from Boston College. He lives in Taunton, Massachusetts with his wife Cathy and family. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Provote, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Sign up for the podcast feed at Scotthorton.org or Scott Horton Show.com. I've got more than 6,000 interviews in the archives. for you there going back to 2003 and follow me on all the video sites and x at scott horton show hey you guys on the line i've got thomas edlam he is our william norman grig fellow at the libertarian institute and he's an austrian school economist just like our previous

guest mark thornton only uh he's at our institute the libertarian institute and he writes lots of really great stuff including this one that i really hated in a good way you know what i mean plutocratic America's war on the working class, rest assured, Tom is not a commie. But he's got a little bit of class war for us here. Welcome to show. Tom, how you do? I'm doing great, Scott. You know, and that's the thing. Like, class war is being waged against regular working Americans. That's, that's my, my case in the piece. And I don't agree with class war, but I think we ought to stop doing the class war. is the point of the piece.

There you go. Okay. So you're a libertarian, and you're right now at the Libertarian Institute, so your case must be it's the poor won't stop picking on America's last persecuted minority big business, right? Kind of the obvious. Yeah, a verse, I should say. It's amazing. You know, if you go to official libertarianism, whether it's the Cato Institute of Reason, You know, they have these slogans of, oh, you know, the poor, I've never had it so good. None of your problems are because someone else is a billionaire. And, you know, in a free market world, that would be true. But we don't live in a free market.

We live in a plutocracy. We live in a place where, as Matt Taibi says, you know, he's no libertarian, but he's not wrong. He says, we live in a place where we're preached at of sink or swim. free marketism, but for a select few, it's a highly regulated and subsidized welfare state. And that's if you look at the history, really since 1979, since we bailed out Chrysler, the general, how do I put it, the general way of looking at things is if a poor man goes bankrupt, it's a recession, but if a rich man loses his bank, it's a crisis. And that's pretty much how government has worked in the last almost 50 years since the Chrysler bailout.

Okay, so in your article here, you're focusing on the difference between payroll taxes and income taxes and so forth paid by a guy who works for a living versus capital gains taxes paid by a guy who owns things for a living now we all uh whether we're you know directors of nonprofits or whatever job that is um or uh you know if we're laborers or if we're any other thing uh working for a living we all want to own capital for a living someday if we could ever save up enough and make some smart investments and so uh nobody i don't think The way I read your article, including yourself, wants to see capital gains taxes go up or disincentivize people to invest and make money that way. We need capital investment.

So people got jobs in the first place. And every working stiff ought to be able to have an opportunity to open his own business too and become a real capitalist of his own as well. so if I read you right that you're not saying you want those taxes to go up then what are you saying about taxes and the relative nature of the taxes between owners and workers and how they pay here well Scott I I guess I don't hit me with a bunch of commie clap trap about how we need a progressive income tax Oh, no, we don't. No, here's the thing. I come from a, I'm a Catholic, I come from a Catholic perspective. I believe in the idea of, from Catholic social teaching of the preferential option for the poor. Now, that doesn't mean I believe in welfare because I'm a libertarian.

I don't believe any welfare. I think we should get rid of all the welfare. I think we should get rid of all the taxes. But the question is, well, what taxes do you get rid of first? And, you know, if you look at the tax rate for the average working person, they're actually paying more than the billionaires. So why would, why would you, like the Cato Institute, propose to increase taxes on, you know,

regular middle class and working poor people and cut the taxes for billionaires? Wouldn't you do it the other way around? Why make it difficult for the working poor? Now, Tom, are you sure that's right? Because I always hear from especially Washington, D.C., libertarians, but right-wingers, too, that, no, only rich people pay taxes and all the poor people are bums who are all getting subsidized. Right. That's what you hear because the way they do it is, is nuanced, manicured, curated way of looking at things. I'm only looking at the income tax. But if you look at, you know, is how labor is taxed. Labor is taxed with a floor of the FICA payroll tax, which is Social Security and Medicare and unemployment, not unemployment insurance, disability insurance. That's 15.3% right off the bat from the first dollar.

you add in inflation, which is all a labor tax. Inflation is wage theft. There's no other way of putting it. Inflation is wage theft. You add in 2 to 8% there, depending on the year. Then you add in the income tax, which, yeah, the working poor don't pay the income tax. But they're already paying as much as Warren Buffett is paying with his capital gains tax, which maxes out at 20%.

They're already paying that much. If you add in inflation and payroll taxes, but the Washington D.C. think tanks, whether it's the, you know, the conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the libertarian, I'm putting, using air quotes here, the libertarian Institute, not a libertarian institute, but the libertarian think tanks like the Kato Institute, they only talk about the income tax. For them, the whole goal is to shift more of the tax burden onto the working core in the middle class. And the reason for it is that their donors are billionaires and they're catering to their donor class. That's what it's all about. But if you take the perspective of, hey, we should cut government across the board, the first place you should cut, in my view, are working people's taxes. That should be the beginning. Because let's face it, you know, the billionaires, they're fine.

They're fine. I do want to get rid of their taxes. I want to get rid of their regulations. But let's take, you know, let's make it a priority to focus on if we're going to get rid of the hurt that the state is creating. Let's start with those taxes that are really hurting the working board, the middle class. And the same thing goes with, with subsidies. You know, I want to get rid of welfare. I think, I think welfare is bad, but I don't

focus on, you know, some single mother on food stamps who's, who's, you know, working two jobs and just can't get by and gets a couple hundred bucks a month. I'm focusing on Elon Musk and all of the other giant welfare queens across the world. I probably shouldn't focus on Elon Musk because the official narrative right now is anyone who's a dissident from the establishment like Elon Musk is officially an enemy of the state or an enemy of America, and we're supposed to hate on Elon Musk. But he is the world's largest welfare queen. I mean, much of the rest of Wall Street is too, but I want to get rid of those welfare benefits before I want to get rid of the, at least my focus is on getting rid of those welfare benefits

first, then, yeah, we can cut the welfare benefits for the, for the poor. Sure. And look, we already have, yeah, we already have this massive welfare state for the rich and the poor, so it makes sense that instead of having progressive taxation, the way to look at it is let's have progressive tax cuts, the people who need their income the most. for keeping their family together and keeping the heat on and all of that, they get the tax relief first and the people who need the tax relief the least get it last, although, as you're saying, should be everybody.

You shouldn't have to pay tax on capital gains either. Yeah, and across the board, too, not just the taxes. Think about the regulations. The regulations, you know, the Federal Reserve puts in as far as suppressing interest rates. Well, that jacks up the price of, the sticker price of real estate. it makes getting a down payment prohibitive for a lot of Americans, you know, because Now, I'm so glad you brought that up. I want to let you, believe me, you're the last guest of the day today, Tom.

I'm going to let you take all the time you need. I want you to talk about this because it's so important because it goes back to something you said a minute ago about inflation, you know, because I learned in junior college that inflation is really good for poor people and working people and middle class people because they get to borrow in dollars and pay back in dimes. And that's what you want, is inflationary money. That's what the Wizard of Oz is all about. Free silver, inflate the money supply, so we can pay back our debts easier, right?

So, but you're pointing out, I mean, you just said when I was interrupting you there, you're talking about, well, you know, if you already own a house and its price goes up, maybe that's one thing, but it makes a lot harder to get into a house. so how do you balance that or do you at all or what well part of it is think about it we like to think of gee the poorest people the people are in debt but that's not true you have to have credit to have debt so generally speaking the richest people have the most debt and so when inflation and forgets debt it forgives the debt of the richest people the most you know when you think about it like the you know you think about the bum

in the street. You know, he doesn't have a dime to his name. And, you know, it's, you know, he's got the little sign, we'll work for food. And there was a stand-up comedian a number of years ago. He said, congratulations. Congratulations. You're even. I'm, you're working for the food. You just, you're going to work for the food. You're going to eat today. I'm still working for the Taco Bell. I ate seven years ago. And, and, you know, that, you need credit in order to have debt. And so, you know, with the exception of, you know, the federal government creating the the student debt crisis, for the most part, you know, when you think about debt, well, one of the biggest debtors is someone like a real estate developer like Donald Trump.

You know, you put 20% down. And, you know, he may be worth $10 billion on net, but he probably has more than $10 billion worth of debt. And, you know, I love to tell this story of this friend of mine from Venezuela. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he's a plasterer, uh, which I am too. I'm a working guy. And, uh, he came to the United States in about, I think it was 2015, but a couple years before he came to the United States. His friends said, oh, you got to, you got to buy a house because the, uh, inflation's coming. And, you know, he's right out of college and, you know, he says, okay, all right, whatever. So he saved up, uh, 30, 30,000 bolivars, got a loan for

300,000 boulevars, and it's like a 10 to one ratio back then. So, I mean, think about it from this, you know, he borrowed $30,000, you know. And he bought his house, moved to the United States, a couple, you know, had a family lived there. He's paying the mortgage off. It's a, maybe $250, $300 a month. And he comes to the United States and starts working as a laborer, even though he's got a college degree.

And a couple of years later, this is only five years into his 30-year mortgage. he still owes over 75% of the principal. So he still owes the equivalent of $20,000 to $25,000 of principal. But his mortgage payments have gone down to less than $1 a month from over $250 a month. And they don't know what you're wondering. How does this happen? And so he asks his wife, well, let's see how much it would take to pay off the whole house.

And it was $120-something. dollars. And what had happened was hyperinflation had taken place in Venezuela and the value of the boulevard became almost zero. In fact, he's literally paying back in dimes like in the saying there. Right, right. And in his case, you know, he paid off the whole mortgage for less than one day's labor when it should have taken, you know, more than six months worth of labor plus interest. And, you know, multiply that by a thousand. for a large real estate developer. You know, they, you know, they do much better.

And this was one of my previous articles at the Libertarian Institute, where, you know, it really helps real estate developers, but it doesn't really help average Americans who just want to buy a house and live in it. You know, the value of the house is to live in it. But the value of the real estate developer is the income you get from it and the equity you build up. And if you build up the equity,

two to three times faster using inflation, Well, that's better for the real estate developer, but it's not better for the average American. And that's, you know, that if anything, it means that my whole thing, the preferential option for the poor in regulations as well. Why do we do this? Well, we do this because there's a lobby that wants that and benefits from it. That's why we do it. And really, we need to, as a people, we need to wake up and put a stop to it. Yeah. Well, you know, I saw where Keith Knight was doing a thing with Joe Mullen earlier, and one of the things Keith was talking about, I may have even got him out of context here. I just heard him say a little bit about how, like, should we be mad at Walmart for charging less for things?

because it seems like our whole policy is built around inflating the currency and to keep prices going up because the last thing you want is a deflationary spiral, Tom, where prices go down. We can't have hard money and falling prices because then no one will buy anything anymore because everyone will be waiting for everything to get cheaper and then so the whole economy will shut down or something.

Yeah, it's based on the Great Depression myth of which where we did have deflation for four years from 1929 to 1933ish and you know in a recession prices do go down but you know when you think about it you know we don't we don't think of it a bad thing when gasoline prices go down you know everybody in you know at the end of the Biden administration was bragging see the gas prices have come down and of course now all of the Republicans are saying, see, the gas prices are coming down. That's a good thing. Why is it a bad thing if prices go down generally across the economy?

It's not. The general tendency of an economy is for prices to go down. I mean, we're not used to it because we have this Federal Reserve inflation over the last 110 years, 115 years. but the general tendency is for production to become more efficient and things to become more affordable, not less affordable. But with inflation and this, again, inflation is wage theft. It becomes less affordable. You know, the American worker, when gold was tied to the dollar, did much better. even at the end, even in the 1960s when they were starting inflation, they still nominally held the dollar to gold, the average American, the median American, you know, the middleist

of the middle class did really well. I mean, advanced, his economy advanced and he was able to get a lot more. Since then, since they, the Bretton Woods system fell apart in 1971, the middle class is stalled. And so is the poor. Now, the rich are still getting richer. And I don't, I don't, I don't a problem with that. I mean, I want the rich to get richer, but I want the poor in the middle class also to get richer. And, you know, the thing is, the rich have a way around inflation, because they're usually the first ones to get the new inflated dollars. You know, they're the government contractors. They are, they are the banks. Whereas, you know, a laborer or someone who works at Walmart, like the example you used, they're the last ones to see it in the economy after

the prices have already gone up. That's why labor, you know, it was a 17th century economist, an Irish guy, Irish slash French guy, Richard Cantillon, who talked about this. That, you know, the person who benefits from inflation is the one who gets the money first. The person who is most hurt by it is the one who gets the money last. The one who gets the money first is the government, and then after that the bankers and then the contractors, they all benefit. But the one who's hurt is the working man who has nothing to do but his wages. And when you think about it, you know, I mentioned in order to benefit from inflation, you have to have credit. But if you are yourself a creditor, you lose from, if you lend money out, you lose from inflation. I mean, you know, unless you're

bank and you just create that money out of nothing in the first place in which you don't care right well well think about it from the perspective of you know if you put your money in the bank why don't you know the bank pays your interest why don't why doesn't everybody just put their money in the bank and gain gain money because it they pays less than the rate of inflation and you know who are the creditors in in society well the number one creditor is laborers i mean uh they almost every laborer does his work and awaits his wages till pay day. He's at least a creditor for a week's wages and usually a couple weeks. So he's a creditor in that way. The poor man who rents his home, he is a creditor because the first thing you go to

the landlord is, he says, I want first, last, and security deposit. He is loaning his, his landlord, the money before he lives in the property. And then when the worker does get his wages, he's waiting for his wages, it's being inflated and the way the values taken from. He was do he puts it in his checking account and that also is is being taxed by inflation you know he's you know and and just the wages themselves are 10 trillion dollars in our 22 trillion dollar economy they're there they're about 40% of our economy and of course that's a huge huge credit yeah and look built into that of course is the lower your wage that means the less you know stance that you have the weaker position you're in to demand a cost of living increase

and the lower skilled people and the people who make the lowest wages are the ones whose jobs are more precarious they can be replaced they're expendable and so they get their cost of living increase last and then i always think of alan greenspan but i'm sure they all do this the chairman of the fed will go on tv and say this upward pressure on wages is causing inflation these poor sons of bitches who are the last ones to get a cost of living increase, they're the reason that prices of everything is going up on the shelf at your burger counter and for a car and a house and everything else. Right. And, of course, the solution is not the leftist solution.

I mean, right now, you know, the Democratic Party, the official Democratic Party, offers workers nothing. You know, they talk about a minimum wage increase, but they don't really do it. They talk about giving benefits to people and whatever, but they don't do it. But the solution is the free market. It's not, oh, let's raise the minimum wage. Well, you raise the minimum wage and you keep inflation going. It wouldn't make any difference.

You know, the wage would just go back down anyway. The solution is the market and cutting taxes for people, you know, on those margins who really would make a, you know, get a benefit out of a tax cut. I mean, a lot of people voted for Trump because, because he offered them a tax cut, and the Democrats offered them nothing. Now, the tax cut was small for the working class. He gave a lot to the rich, and let's face it, the rich do pay more taxes, cumulatively at least, even if they pay a lower percentage.

But the people remembered that. They gave him, Trump offered them crumbs, and that was better than what the Democrats offered them, which is nothing. they said you'll get nothing and you'll like it and you know the working people tend to say no i mean you're like if you look at the voting demographics uh the democrats locked up the rich uh with with the very few exceptions like they're there's they're definitely demonizing Elon Musk and a few other billionaires uh the Koch brothers and the rest of them but for the most part the people who are millionaires and people who are, you know, in the upper class,

the people who are educated with advanced degrees, me being an exception, they tend to vote Democrat, whereas regular working steps who don't have a college degree who make less than the median wage or near the median wage, they tend to vote for Trump because Trump offered them something. Yeah. Hey, yeah, let me tell you about Robertson, Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore. Foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills. One, they know they need to, and two, that means you need to too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts. Park your money there and watch Uncle Joe Biden just counterfeit its value away. You can see how the

Fed is afraid to raise rates to beat inflation for fear of popping the current bubbles, at least before the election. So more inflation it will continue to be. Gold is your shield against monetary and price inflation, just like it always has been. Now Tim Fry and the guys over at Roberts and Roberts are recommending gold over silver since the world's almost 200 governments are putting their own pressure on the price, which should help everyone else who make similar calls on their own. Of course, Roberts and Roberts can help you with platinum, palladium, and silver as well as gold. don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away

look up Roberts and Roberts at RRBI.co That's RRBI.co Hey you guys The audiobook of Provoked is out Okay well I've started posting the chapters at my substack Scott Horton Show.com

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See, that way it says on your shirt, why you're so smart. Libertas Bella, from the same great folks who bring you ammo.com for all your ammunition needs, too. That's libertasbella.com. Hey, y'all got kids or nephews or anything? You know about the Tuttle Twins books, right? Libertarian lessons about life, liberty, truth, and the state. It's really great stuff. And hey, did you guys know I'm a Tuttle Twin?

Or, well, I'm a character in their world now. Skater Scott, local vert dog, and anti-government know it all. They introduced me in a short book last year, and I hear they're going to develop my character's story a bit more in the future. Cool, right? Anyway, they're now celebrating 10 years and having sold millions of these books. And now they're giving away free magazine at Tuttle Twins.com slash 10 years. years. There's no shipping charge, and they're not going to ask for your credit card. It's just a free

magazine. The gimmick is that inside the magazine, they've got a really great deal to get all the books, the best deal they've ever offered, which you will certainly want to take them up on. So go to tuteltwins.com slash 10 years for your free magazine, and someday, hopefully soon, you and your kids will be reading all about the libertarian antics of cartoon me, along with all my new pals. That's Tuttle Twins.com slash 10 years. Well, I mean, at least there's that. I mean, I was just about to say, the more corruption, the more young people, you know, in our capitalist system, the more young people tend to be socialist, believing that that's

the opposite of the system that they live under, rather than that's what's wrong with the system that they live under is the degree of socialism in it. And, of course, as we're talking about it, for the people who've already made it, it first yes but the solution to that ain't nationalizing more things and and all of that and so when you go well it's turning people to the populist right now away from these horrible you know center left liberals slash culturally socialist weird feminist whatever things they are now the democrats then i'll take right wing populism over that um but it ain't libertarianism there are drawbacks as we're just talking about with Mark Thornton on the show that Trump is an easy money guy he doesn't want a monetary system like we would prefer because at the very least it would be a tough transition to hard money from the absolutely ridiculously rigged game that we live under now it is a rig game and the you're right that's that's that's part of it I'm I'm I'm

actually disappointed with a lot of libertarians, not even just the, you know, the Cato Institute people who sort of rig the game against regular working Americans. But, you know, there's a lot of libertarians, even in a libertarian party, I'm the Massachusetts State Party treasurer for the time being. I'm not running for reelection. But who are just so enthusiastic about Trump. And I think, okay, there's some good things that he's done. And I like the fact that the, you know, U.S. Health and Human Service Agency and the CDC are going to be less corrupt. But there's a backside to that. RFC, and really the whole Trump cabinet and Trump himself, they were all 2004 Democrats. They were all 2004 Democrats. The RFK was put in charge of the world's largest welfare agency, the Health and Human Services

department without a mandate to cut anything, not a penny. And he's making it more credible. He's making it more reputable by going after some of the corruption. And as a libertarian, I think, well, I guess I don't want the corruption. But at the same time, I don't want people to say, oh, look at this great agency. You know, we can't cut anything. It's such a good agency. Look, you know, they got rid of all the corruption. it makes it to me more sustainable in some ways it's more dangerous in a way although they are really just popularizing the idea that the government doesn't care about you they're against you you might as well just route the vipers out you know well there's an attitude there and you know the fact that he's exposing the corruption is it is a great moment for us as libertarians both capital and lower l libertarians because before a lot of that stuff was arguable. They'd say, oh, no, you know, there's nothing wrong with big pharma.

You know, you want to get all your, all your vaccines. And now he's saying, well, you know, maybe some of these medicines are being recalled because they didn't really do a study. And maybe they were pushing them when they shouldn't have. And maybe the, maybe this food pyramid was created by lobbies rather than by science. And maybe all, and so on and so forth. And the fact that they can expose that, that's a good thing. But what we don't want is for this to legitimize the welfare state and make it more permanent and more sustainable.

You know, to a certain extent, if something is openly corrupt and obviously corrupt, it's much easier to abolish than something that is, oh, it appears to be doing a good job and they've rooted out all the corruption. And that's one of my worries. I think a lot of the cuts that the Trump administration and Musk and Doge are coming up with, I think a lot of them are going to be undone by the courts. You know, like the lower court just came out today and said that the cuts in the U.S. Agency for International Development are foreign aid program, which is all money laundering and corruption. Those have to be spent. And there's in this court precedent all the way to the Supreme Court, going back to train

versus city of New York in 1974 when Nixon tried to do the same thing. And the Supreme Court said, now you can't do that. Congress is in charge. Now, we have a zombie Congress that doesn't do anything, but I think the Supreme Court is going to, even with the justices that are better than they were in 1974, I think they're still going to say, no, Congress should be in charge. And if Congress passes the spending, then that's it. I think that's a lot of this dose. stuff that a lot of these cuts unfortunately are going to be undone and we'll be spending more man um well wouldn't that suck if it all came to nothing i i don't guess you think that trump would ever actually go ahead and veto a budget and force them to cut the things that have already been

advised i mean if they just take it all back at this point and i've been seeing them i subscribe to the washington times email alert and they just say send out stuff all day about court strikes down this, court strikes down that, looks like the agenda is really being reversed. I wonder if the administration is going to fight them at all or what? Well, I'm sure the administration will fight it to the Supreme Court, but like I said, you know, the precedent has been set the other way around, and that's the problem. I want to be optimistic, but I'm old enough, I'm in my late 50s, I'm old enough to remember that

a lot of this stuff is just bluster i mean it's it's some of my favorite videos coming out of washington in the last couple years have been thomas massey talking about how all the budget is just theater i you know that's just gold it's and it is so true i mean he's he's the only one in washington really who's serious and everybody else is just doing theater yeah that too bad Welcome to our same world we've been living in. It's a little bit of hope and change reminds me of the Obama years, right, where people are getting all excited. But like, come on, what's to be excited about here, really, dude? No matter who you vote for, you always get Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yeah, all right, let me not, let me try to end on a positive note here. I do feel like we are in a moment where real change. is possible. When you think about it, you know, we've got, we've got this case of Javier Malay, who's far from perfect, and everybody who gets elected is, is always disappoints. And he's not an exception, but he ran on a libertarian platform. And he's made some real cuts and made some real improvement in Argentina. We've got the case of Donald Trump, who really ran as a third party candidate inside the Republican Party. And one, you know, how did he do it? It's because the media is no longer in control, you know, under control by whatever the, you know, whatever you want to

call it, the deep state, the, you know, the intelligence community, the liberal hoi, whatever you want to call it. There is an alternative media that is many multiples bigger than the old corporate media of the big five corporations, right? There's five corporations that used to get 90% of your news from.

ABC Disney, NBC Universal, CBS, they also have six flags, I think. CBS Viacom, and they have six flags. And then there's a box, and I'm trying to think what the last one is, ABC, NBC, CBS. CNN time order.

Those are the five big ones. But you know what? The Joe Rogan podcast has a bigger audience when it comes to actual news than Fox for a 24-hour period plus CNN for a 24-hour period plus MSNBC for a 24-hour period

plus the New York Times, the Washington Post, all of them. He has a bigger audience on one podcast. And he's not the only one. I mean, he's the biggest one. But, I mean, actually, Tucker Carlson might be even bigger than Joe Rogan these days. They're right up there. Yeah. I mean, you know, his his podcast with Javier Malay got, I think, 425 million views. And the one with Putin got a couple hundred million views. And that's just, you know, I mean, CNN doesn't get a million on a good day. So, It's just, it's outsized and they don't know what to do.

That's why there's a global censorship complex growing across the world. That's why the CIA, which can't do anything domestically here with the First Amendment, they've outsourced it to Europe, to Brazil, to try to censor media that will not comply, that will not curate their news and their opinion to whatever they want. It's not working that well right now. I think there's an opportunity for a real libertarian to rise and get elected to national office and make a real difference and make real cuts. I'm not saying necessarily in the next couple years, maybe, maybe in 2028, but 2032. I mean, we have that opportunity.

We have the ability to get the message out. And we didn't before. I mean, nobody, you know, it was almost important. possible for Ron Paul to get out a major message. He would do an interview of 45 minutes on CNN and they wouldn't run it at all or they'd run 15 seconds and that would be it. He wouldn't be able to get his message out. Now libertarians can get their message out and we can show, hey, we're not capitalist pigs. We're just, we just believe in free enterprise and giving regular people a fair shake and yeah we we don't believe in welfare but we do believe it's taking care of people

on our own voluntarily and explaining that to them and saying look our focus is is get rid of the welfare but let's start with the welfare for the rich our focus is let's cut taxes and let's cut taxes for the poor first cut taxes for the rich too but for the poor first because they're paying double the rate. Capital is paying double the rate of tax. Half that, rather, capital is paying half the rate of tax that labor is paying. So let's give some relief to the, to the working people. Because if you go back before the, one of the other big changes other than inflation, before the United States went off, the gold standard, is the payroll tax was less than half of what it is now. You know, the payroll tax was 4 or 5% in the 50s, and by the 60s, they'd gotten up to 6, 7%, 7%.

You can look online for the different charts. It's up to, it's been 15.3%, generally speaking, since the early 1980s. But that makes a big difference. I mean, one of the ways to accumulate capital, one of the biggest ways to accumulate capital is just to start saving, even if you save a small amount of money. If you saved $1,000 in 1929, right? before the big crash, and you just left it in this S&P 500 until last year, you'd have $5.7 million, even with the crash. Now, a lot of that's inflation, but that's still $337,000, $337,000

after inflation. So the ability to invest money early when you're working and not making that much money, makes a big difference for when you're, when you retire and get older. And that has been taken away from regular working people, especially by the Social Security and Medicare program. I mean, they say it's, you know, the payroll taxes go to those programs, but they don't really go to those programs. It's a unified budget and the spending at the federal level has not had anything to do with the payroll taxes. I've had not anything to do with social security since 1968, they haven't really kept, they have a paper tab going on. They have an Excel spreadsheet. That's it. There's not really a trust fund. The trust fund was looted in 1968 to balance

the budget, 1969, fiscal 1969 to balance the budget. So that, it's, it's, what we need to do is, is look forward and and get a can get some candidates and get some uh some media exposure for those uh for those great libertarian groups like the libertarian institute scott you're you can put together a good group here but also the the mises institute there's just so many great groups out there that need wider exposure and i'm glad to see that they're getting it finally yeah now as long as I have you here, then, if we got our way and the government had to admit the truth that this really is all a big Ponzi scheme and an unsustainable one, too, then how would you fix it in a way that is not just a big rip-off for the rich, reminded of W. Bush saying,

yeah, you know, what we need to do is take all the Social Security IOUs and put all that in the stock market bubble, the same one that crashed on his watch in September 2008 and was the worst catastrophe since 29. Remember that same bubble that he wanted to put all the Social Security money in? So what do we do instead of that? Well, the irony is that, you know, if you were to put the average, average worker and you take his taxes and you put it into the stock market and he retires and the stock market performs exactly like it does in 1929, which is worse than 2008, he still does better.

He can still pull out more money every single year than he can with Social Security. So, you know, if the stock market is a casino, Social Security is worse than a casino. It's a worse investment than stock market casino, okay? But how do we get out of it? You know, we can get out of it the same way Chile got out of it. We can get out of it the same way. Really, Australia is kind of getting out of it. They have a Chile just basically said, look, if you're under,

50, the program is gone, and that's what it is. You know, you're just going to save in a private fund, and that's what it is. And, you know, we'll honor the retirement, the very measly retirement funds that, that for those who are retired currently and are about to retire. I think basically they said, you know, I forget what the exact way said. They said something like, if you're 45 to 55, we'll give you the choice. you're under 45, you're off. There's no public system, and you're not going to get one, but there's a private investment fund. And then if you're, if you retired, you're retired,

whatever will, we'll honor that program. That's probably the only way to do it to sunset it. I, I, you know, there's just no other way politically that you could get it done. But it has been done that way. And the Chileans have done well by it. They, actually gone back to socialism a little bit in the past couple decades, but the state planning has not come back. The state retirement program has not come back because it's even with some fluctuations in the Chilean stock market like the U.S., it's still a better deal than than the old private, the old government fund. And we're going to find that.

I mean, the longer things go with Social Security and Medicare, the more people are going to realize that, gee, I'm throwing a ton of money into this and I'm getting nothing back. The thing with a private fund is that you can pull out 7% forever and never run out of money. Whereas if you're on a pay-go system like Social Security and Medicare, the benefits are paid by work. people who are working right now into the person who's retired right now.

And as longevity increases, as people live longer, I mean, when Social Security started, the average Social Security recipient only received benefits for four years, and many of them received none at all because they didn't live to 65. Now the average age is 79, 81, depending on whether you're male or female. So people are receiving Social Security benefits for 15 years, well, longevity is probably going to increase even more, which means they're going to have to either raise the taxes, turn it into a full-blown welfare state, welfare program, which all the left is talking about, oh, raise the cap, raise the cap, we'll just have billionaires subsidize it. Or they're going to have to cut the benefits, which they've also done. They've cut the benefits by, by postponing the age of full retirement to 67. It's another, it's another, terribly regressive tax there.

I mean, you already talked about how it's regressive in the part of it. That's the payroll tax and all that. But how about just poor people die earlier? I think, you know, black people in America, average life expectancy is mid-60s, right? When you would start getting your Social Security money, right? Right. And, you know, if they could have put the money away, they could, you know, will it to their children or the grandchildren or whatever or their wife. But instead, you know, Social Security pays out when you die.

It's the same amount since 1935. It pays out $255. Whereas, you know, I've done the math, the average American, on the average salary and an average career would retire with $1.2 million in their bank account. if they're just the social security portion of their FICA taxes, not counting Medicare, not counting disability insurance, justice security portion, if you put that into a private fund over the, and they were to retire in 1920, 2003 or 2004, they would, they would have 1.2 million. And the number is only going to increase, not just because of inflation, but because, you know, many of the people who are retiring will have paid in the full 15.3% of the payroll tax, I think 10.4 goes to Social Security. They will have paid in that full proportion from the very

first day they entered the workforce. Many of the people retiring right now paid a very much lower rate of their Social Security tax because they, you know, they just, raised the tax over the years, and of course, they finalized it with Reagan in 1983, I think it was, at 15.3, it's, you know, between Medicare and Social Security and Disability. Crazy, man. All right. Well, I hate government even more than before, even though I already did as much as I can without just... Then I've done a good job. Imploding. Yes, you have. Listen, everybody you got to give me money so i can pay tom edlam to write articles that's basically the scam it's the libertarian institute it's a 501c3 nonprofit organization so you can write it off on your income taxes

and then you donate that money to me i control the bank account but then i just disperse it to my writers that's basically the deal also i get to keep some but mostly i just give it to them and i got books to produce i've got articles and podcasts to publish to publish including those by the great Tom Edlum here. So please stop by Libertarian Institute.org slash donate and do what you can. We have $25,000 worth of matching funds from two very generous donors right now.

And so we're seeking more of those and we're sure to appreciate the very small ones too, whatever you guys can do. And then you'll get to keep reading great stuff by the likes of Tom Edelam at the Institute. Sounds like a fair bargain. thank you tom thank you scott all right you guys that is tom edlam and he's at the institute and this one is called plutocratic america's war on the working class i'm going to read nothing like that at cato dot org you imagine donating to cato dot org you know ted carpenter writes

for me now too so that's just we all like doug but he'll be fine donate to the institute thank you Thanks for listening to Scott Horton Show, which can be heard on APS Radio News at Scotthorton.org, Scott Horton Show.com, and the Libertarian Institute at libertarian institute.org.