THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The Conservative Perspective with Stephen Moore

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

GET INSIDE the MIND of Donald Trump’s economic advisor! In this TWO part mini-series, I am going to be sitting down with 2 of the top PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORS from each side of the political spectrum. You're going to hear The Conservative Perspective AND The Liberal Perspective on today's economy. Too often we put blinders on and don't ever hear the story from the other side of the room. We watch only our favorite new stations, get fed social media content that the algorithm knows we want to see, and the truth becomes a one-sided conversation. This is EXACTLY why I wanted to make this two-part series for you all to receive as much unfiltered information straight from the mouths of the ones closest to the action, without the news or social media skewing the data with biases. My first guest, Stephen Moore, was an advisor to President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and a former member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Stephen was nominated by Trump to become a governor of the Federal Reserve and is also a former FOX News and CNN commentator. I have to be honest with you, we don’t agree with each other on everything...But I'm holding NOTHING back as we challenge one another to find the TRUTH. MY JOB IN BOTH INTERVIEWS IS TO ASK HARD QUESTIONS! IM NOT POLITICAL, I HAVE NO AGENDA. I ASK DIFFICULT QUESTIONS ABOUT TRUMP (and his philosophies )AND NEXT WEEK I DO THE SAME WITH OBAMA! We talk about everything MAJOR from the state of the US Economy, unemployment, inflation, and interest rates, to Trump's greatest accolades, and who he REALLY is behind closed doors. Next week I'll be releasing the 2nd part of this 2-part mini-series; The Liberal Perspective, with a very special guest! I want YOU to be fully equipped so that you can VOTE based on the FACTS and make the BEST decision not just for you, but for your family and for the United States.

This is the Edmmerwood Show. Welcome back to Max out everybody. Today, we are going to talk the economy. And we're going to take a look at what I'd call the conservative perspective on it. And then next week, we're going to talk the economy and have a more liberal or Democrat perspective. And I think the best person on Earth to discuss the economy from this perspective. The gentleman to my right is Stephen Moore.

Stephen was an economic advisor to President Trump's 2016 campaign. He was just nominated by President Trump recently to be a member of the Federal Reserve. And was also the chief economic writer for the Wall Street Journal. Yeah, for 10 years. For 10 years, so this is a perfect time.

I'm really grateful you took the time to see. Thank you for having me. Thanks, great house for home you house. Thank you, and you're welcome here, as I told you, anytime you want to be here. Okay, so why do you think, let's get right into it. Why do you think there's a perception that the economy isn't working for everybody.

That most people think this economy, capitalism in general, right now isn't working for the vast majority of people. Is that a false belief in why do you think people think that? Well, I actually would even challenge the question. I think people feel pretty good about the economy right now. I mean, the statistics show about 60 to 65% Americans feel like the economy is either good or great. That's a pretty good number. Americans feel like the economy is either good or great. That's a pretty good number.

But do they think that economy is good or great for them? Yeah, they do. I mean, we're seeing nice income gains right now. I think things are pretty good. I mean, think about this. We've got the lowest unemployment rate in the United States in 50 years. We've got the lowest inflation rate in 50 years. We've got the lowest interest rates in 50 years.

We've got the biggest wage gains in 50 years. We've got the lowest interest rates in 50 years. We've got the biggest wage gains in 20 years. We have one of the statistics I love to use is 7.1 million. You know what that number is? That is the number of unfilled jobs in the United States. 7.1 million. That's larger than the entire population in the state of Indiana. That's how many surplus jobs there are. So if you're a worker looking for a job and you have a skill, you know, that actually employers want, you can find a job. This is probably the best job market in 50 years. Now, whether we can sustain this, you know, who knows what the future will bring. But right now, this is a pretty damn good economy. It really is. And now, our growth rate isn't quite where we'd like it to be. It's fallen down. You know, we wanted to get, Larry Cudlow and I wanted

to get to 3 to 4 percent. Trumpetized. I said, I want five! Right, right, exactly. But, you know, so we're now growing a 2 to 2.5%, which is decent. You know, I think the China situation has been a problem, you know, for Trump in terms of trying to get that trade situation result. But no, I'm going to say it's a pretty darn healthy economy. Right. I think that, well, I could tell you, by the way, I'm not going to tip my own hand on what I believe that I'm going to challenge things from both of you and Austin. Right. I think that, well, I could tell you, by the way, I'm not going to tip my own hand on what I believe that I'm going to challenge things from both of you and Austin.

And, you know, I could tell you that when I see this recent advent, this drive for socialism, or what I'd call a real modification to capitalism, I think that's driven out of a sentiment. I'm not talking about that. I think most people think, hey, the economy is going well. Obviously, unemployment is lower, African-American unemployment's lower, it's ever been, Latino unemployment. Latino wages are higher than I've ever been, Asian wages higher than I've ever been. And so I think people see that,

but I don't think most people feel like that they're benefiting that they're growing from it. So we disagree about that. And that my proof of that is this advent of a massive shift to some extent, in some circles, particularly Democrat circles, for a more socialist type economy A more redistribution type economy, you know, I'm gonna challenge you again on that one because I think my view is Because we do have prosperity now

People you know look this is this the recession in the new June of 2009 This is October of 2019. So this has been a long, it hasn't been the most powerful expansion, but it's been a long one. My feeling about this is people are kind of taking prosperity for granted right now. They think, oh, this is just the natural course of things for things to grow. And when people get better off, then they're willing to say, oh, well, let's give stuff away for free and move toward a more socialistic model. I think it's almost a symptom of the fact that things are going well, that people are

starting to say, oh, let's have free health care, let's have free college tuition, let's have the, you know, my patron saint economist, I don't know who yours is, was Milton Friedman. And did you know Milton Friedman? I know who he is, of course, of RedSight. But I always fortunate enough to know Milton pretty well, especially at the end of his life. And I consider him the greatest economist of the last 200 years since Adam Smith.

And Milton used to say to me, Steve, he said, what was the most important enduring lesson of the 20th century? And he would answer his own question, say it's that free market capitalism is a success. And communism, socialism, Maoism, Stalinism, Naziism, all these massive government control models are failures, right? And then he would for learnly say to me, you know, yet the lesson we seem to have learned

from all this is we need more socialism, you know? And I don't get it, you know. Socialism is a failure almost everywhere it has been tried. And so I shudder to think we're gonna move in that direction, because I just think it's so wrong. And the other thing that I'm really concerned about is the war against wealth and the war against success, and the war against anyone.

You've made it, you've built a business, you're successful, you've experienced the American dream. What's wrong with that? People think people like you are villains because you're successful. Listen to the rhetoric out of Elizabeth Warren. I think that's pernicious, frankly. I mean, John F. Kennedy, who was a Democrat, used to say, a rising tide lifts all boats. You know, and that's what we want. We want to be an aspirational country.

I don't hear a lot of aspiration from the politicians these days. I don't, on either side, but I think you agree with that. The reason I wanted you on it, and the reason I want people listening, this is, I think politics has become this debate of who's good and who's bad. President Clinton actually had a great quote once, I don't know if they really believed it or not, but he said, politics shouldn't be about about who's good and bad, but who's right and wrong. And we demonize each other, which I think creates these extremes in both sides of the party.

And I want people listening to this today, because there's half my audience agrees with everything you say. The other half, how about today, and I'm going to do this with Austin too for the Conservatives? Just listen to what they have to say. Let's hear their perspective. So, I want to, I want to, by the way, it's so funny you should say that. I was just doing an interview the other day. I said exactly the same thing.

The biggest thing, I think, the troubling thing I see in America today is people are hanging out with only people who agree with them. And, you know, I may disagree with you, but I don't think you're evil. I mean, and I don't disagree with you, but I mean, the idea that somehow, because you disagree with something, someone you find them offensive, that's a new thing in America. And it means we're not listening to each other. We're not coming into any kind of bipartisan consensus. And this is leading to a polarization in the country, which I don't know about you, but I've never seen it this

bad. I've never seen it this bad. And I think there's a lot of factors contributing to this. I just watched what Ellen said a few weeks ago, which was a very reasonable thing she said about sitting with President Bush, and she just got destroyed for saying a very reasonable thing. And I think one of the reasons that that is is that technology has begun to feed us only what we believe in as well. So not only do we only associate personally with people who agree with us, but because of what we click on, we're getting more of what we click on.

It's self-random force. Right, all the time. But to be specific, then I'm going to challenge you on something. Be specific. If someone said to you, hey, look, I do feel like what Ed said. I don't feel like the economy's working for me. Or I'm a young person. I've come out of a pretty liberal university. I look at wage growth prior to recent, prior to last year, so wage growth was terrible

in the country. Statistically, anyway, since the 70s and even the 50s recently. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no we can afford, you know, every, you know, every records that are reached, and the conclusion is, undeniable. Undeniable. The average poor person today has a higher living standard than the average middle class person 50 years ago. The average poor person actually in some ways

has a higher living standard than even wealthy people, than, you know, you know. What's that, what's that living standard measured by? By life expectancy, by health, by the things that you can buy. I mean, my goodness, you know, you have a self, everyone has a self, everyone's listening to this. That cell phone has more computing power than every computer that was used during World War II.

Well, I don't think most people would argue, Steve, that technology has advanced quality of life for people. But I challenge you on that because I think the statistics will show now that, for example, new home buyers. So I'd look at someone like my sister, who's 30 years old, her husband's in his mid-30s. They make a great living. They live in California. They can't afford to buy a home. Whereas many, many years ago, a single income family could own a home in this country. Well, it's a fair enough. Let me give you a couple of. Let me give you a statistic.

Top 1% in 1979 earned 12% of all market income. In 2016, they earned 20% of all market income. Do that one again. Okay. Top 1% in 1979, the top earners earned 12% of all market income that was earned. In 2016, it's 20%. So it's almost done. Of all the what? Market income, income in the country. 20%. So it's almost done. All the what?

Market income income income income. Oh, the income, yeah. Okay, but so what? You know, look, I think that's a bogus statistic. Okay. Because you know what, we have Mark Zuckerberg. We have Bill Gates. We have all of these billionaires like Warren Buffett.

But the fact that they, this is my whole point. The fact that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and Zuckerberg has billions and billions of dollars doesn't make you or me poor. I mean, think about the people benefited from everything. People say, oh my God, the founder of a Facebook has, let's say Zuckerberg's wealth is $30, $40 billion. Well, first of all, think of all the people that he's made into millionaires because of Facebook.

Number two, a billion people on the globe use Facebook. Nobody puts a gun to your head and says, you have to use Facebook, right? And, you know, I just hate this idea. Just because one person gets wealthy doesn't, it's not a zero sum game. It's not like, because you have more, I get less. No, it's an additive game.

You're wealthy because you've added to the economy. You've helped other people. Google is a good example. I mean, when I first came to Washington, I wrote a column recently on this. My first job was literally warehousing myself in the Library of Congress to find statistics for the, you know, and I'd literally spend hours and hours and hours, now literally I go to Google and three seconds I can find out the answer to things that it took me three days to find. Sure.

But you know what, Google charges me for that? Zero. Zero. That's pretty amazing. No, I do think it's amazing. I think there's two. I think there's two. And help, by the way.

Look at the survey. What if God forbid that you or I were diagnosed with cancer? The survival rates from cancer today are almost 70%. Versus even 30 or 40 years ago, if you got a cancer diagnosis, it was like a death sentence. So a lot of the things we just take for granted that are so much better now.

Now my promise is, and you may disagree with this, this is the single greatest time to ever be alive. And I would add to that, we are living in the greatest place to be alive. Of course we are. I mean, this, I mean by that, our country, you know, where we have freedom and liberty, and you got me going here, I want to make one of the points. I do hear the grousing, you know, you know, well, it's hard to get a home and we have

almost people. No, I'm not saying there are problems in this country. But, and people want to move towards social. Whenever I give speeches, and I know you give a lot of speeches yourself, I talk about freedom and free market capitalism. And the dangers of socialism, and what is so interesting to me, is the people who always come up to me after my speeches. You know who they are?

The people who actually came from socialist countries. You're right. People live behind East, you know, the Berlin Wall in East Germany and people who didn't have freedom. And they'll come up to me and say, I came here because we have freedom. And now Americans are trying to give away those free, they said, we had government health care in Romania. It wasn't very good.

I did not have that in the United States. No, you're right. And a lot of friends in Canada, I travel there often, or like, be careful what you wish for. Yeah. So, I'm not trying, again, I'm not trying to tip my hand on where I agree, I'm trying to take the devil's advocate position. I'm saying, when I say you, I mean, kind of an attitude

in a matter of fact. I think what people would argue, and I would also argue, is that I don't think there's any question that the world's better than it was 50 years ago. There's no question that medical science has improved, technologies improved. I think what most people are saying is if I'm in the middle, my financial life, the way we live, the fact that both of us need to produce an income now that it is harder to own a home in this country that savings rates are, the average American is 4,000 bucks saved, right?

Yeah, that's a problem. The average individual income is $31,000 a year. The top 1% individual, not household. Okay, the individual income is $31,000, and the average 1% is at 1.5 million. There's an income gap, it's expanded. We could argue, and by the way, I think that I don't think most people,

well, you may be right, most people may think, well, when one person's getting richer, I'm getting poor. I certainly don't believe that's true. I wanna take another angle on capitalism for you for a minute outside of the economy. And that is, I've getting poor. I certainly don't believe that's true. I want to take another angle on capitalism for you for a minute outside of the economy. And that is, I've been reading a lot about this lately and maybe you agree with this.

Because I don't even think we relate. I would really say that capitalism is not a good term. Because people are against capitalism. Capitalism. So I like to use the free enterprise system or free market capitalism. Because capitalism people think of Marxism and, you know, that just capitalism means you're holding down people to get ahead and so on.

Correct. Good point. I think one thing that the conservative side, I think the conservative side of most arguments, they're terrible at phraseology. We are. And the left is great. And the left is very good at it. And I also think that, and we need even in this dialogue,

I think sometimes the conservative perspective sounds disconnected, sounds like it doesn't care. I think you know that. And it's something that really needs to be guarded together. And it's not only one of my heroes in life, another hero was Jack Camp, remember? Sure. The great congressman who played a big role.

And Jack used to say, nobody cares what you know. Do they know what you care? That you care. And there's so much truth to that. If you don't think I give a damn about you, you're not going to listen to what I have to say. That's exactly right. And I think the Republicans have lost that debate many years ago.

They've lost that narrative. I want to give you one other. That's what I liked. One thing Trump did that I kind of liked was he went into the inner cities and he'd say, look, give us a try. You know, the people run Chicago or Newark or Cleveland or Detroit, you know, they haven't done so.

Well, why don't you try a different approach? Right, I thought it was wonderful that he made that effort as well. I'm going to give you one other argument about capitalism, because I don't even know that we are a capitalist society. I think we're sort of modified capitalism. We have a progressive tax rate system, which is essentially almost socialist type tax rates it.

And I know you helped Trump with his tax plan, which we're going to talk about in a minute. But having said that, one of the other things I've been reading about capitalism or the lack of regulation in capitalism, okay, is this idea that there becomes much more control, almost monopoly type control. You referenced Google earlier. People would argue that there's some danger that Google controls 80% of all the searches in the country. That Facebook has somewhere between 7-80% of all social media.

Get a couple stats. Two corporations own 90% of all the beer we drink. Five banks control half of the nation's assets. A lot of data says once banks go over 50 billion, they become a little bit less efficient. Many state health insurance markets, 80 or 90% are one or two companies in Alabama. It's one company, almost 90% high-speed internet, all local monopolies, four players control the beef market.

After a couple mergers, three companies will control 70% of the world's pesticide market. How do you feel about that? That there seems to be this contraction of control in the economy that we have now over some really important things. Like a Google or an Amazon, Amazon makes it very difficult. They control who gets on their shelf. They make it very difficult for retailers to make a breakthrough as well. Is that just part of the big eating the small and that's what you're getting capitalism because people see that as well?

My view is that once you get to be the king of the hill, like a Google or like an Amazon, by the way, it ain't easy. It will be easy. I hear all these people say, oh, we should break up these companies. I'm not in favor of that, as long as you can compete. As long as a competitive environment. One of my favorite books of all time is called,

and I want you to get it, okay? I'm gonna send it to you. It's called The Myth of the Robert Berens. Because remember the whole anti-trust stuff, that way it came in the progressive in the first part of the 20th century. And there was this view that JP Morgan and John Rockefeller and all these people, Henry Ford were monopolists and that they were hurting poor people.

And in fact, the truth is, there's a few people who's done more to build the United States that Johnny Rockefeller and Henry Ford. And I don't like the assault against success. It gets back to the theme we've been talking about. Now, I think my view about Google and Facebook, by the way, I hate Facebook's politics. I'm a conservative, they're a liberal. So, you know, but I still defend,

my response to Facebook's politics is, I just don't have a Facebook account, you know? I don't wanna use their product, nobody forces me to use it. But I think, look, let's do the show 10 years from now. Okay, in October of 2009, and I guarantee you, Google will not be one of the biggest companies. Facebook will not be one of the biggest companies.

Amazon, who knows? Amazon could go bankrupt. I mean, it's these companies. I remember, by the way, in the financial, you know, distress of 2008, when you had these big banks within a matter of weeks, remember that they failed. So, I don't want the government. I think you make a good point.

I look at a blockbuster video, they didn't evolve. I now Netflix dominates that market. So, typically, I'm on the board of two startup companies that are in the technology industry. Talk about that for some time. And, you know, we, both of the companies, you know, we hope, you know, there's startups, there are always high risk when you start up a new company, you've done that yourself.

But one of the things we hope is, look, you know, we've started with maybe $5 million of capital that we raised. We hope to get the maybe $50 million valuation. Then you know what we want? Well, Google to buy us. That's right. I mean, so the fact that you have the Google's and the Apple's

and the Amazon's out there actually inspires new businesses to start because you got somebody out there who can value out. OK, let's start to agree with that. I'm not going to say if I get your disagree. But I will say, I'm going to ask you about a couple of things that I do think that are out there. I want to talk about the tax plan that you helped produce

for President Trump at 2016 tax plans. At 2016, I guess, is- We passed it. Passed it to December 22, 2017. OK, 2017. And I read often, most people would say, well, the majority of those cuts went to corporations. Although wage growth has spiked,

data shows a lot of those corporations took that actually money, bought back their own stock, that it didn't necessarily trickle down necessarily to the employees. That's something that you're going to hear. Facts do support that that's true to some extent. So, what do you feel about that? First of all, the tax cut itself,

when we talked to Donald Trump about it back four years ago, Larry Cutler and I, we recommended a reduction in the business tax rate because we believe that was the biggest problem with the economy. Now look, you just get this from a competitive standpoint. The United States had a 40% tax rate on our businesses, small businesses and large corporations. The rest of the world was down at about 20%. And by the way, they kept going down, down, down, down, down. And we had seen major American companies that were involved in what were called inversions,

where they were actually giving up their US citizenship and moving to Canada, or Mexico, or China, or Ireland, Ireland as the lowest factor. So we told Trump, look, this is not putting America first. And a lot of Democrats believe that as well. They did actually. We got, you know, unfortunately, not a lot of America. But the point is, we wanted to make America, the whole idea was, how do we make American companies competitive in a global economy? You know, this is a global world. There's no putting the genie back in that battle,

right? And so the idea was, let's get the rates down, so we're in the game. And Trump loved that idea. By the way, he was the one who insisted not just for big corporations but also for there's 26 million small businesses in this country. 26 million. Let's make sure every man and woman who runs a business gets this lower rate. Now I'm not going to apologize for that because I actually think it's been a big success. One of the things that's happened is we're sucking capital now from the rest of the world into the United States. We're the yet country right now. Japan isn't growing.

Germany has been in a recession. Europe is flatline. China's economy is falling. We're doing really well relative to the rest of the world. I would argue as a competitive point of view by cutting those rates, we made America a more attractive place to invest in. Some people would argue though that that has been true, we've seen that happen. But having said that,

that this was gonna be paid for with GDP growth and that the deficit is growing as well and that that's not a very conservative principle. All right, I'm gonna give you a statistic, okay. You ready for this one? So in 2019, this today, when we talk, it's what about October 22nd. So we, the fiscal year for 2019 ended on September 30th.

So we now know what were the numbers for 2019. Federal tax receipts, the collections into the federal treasury in 2019, adjusted for inflation where the highest they've ever been in American history. Now what that tells me, then you're saying, well, why do we have a trillion dollar budget deficit? And what that tells me is then you're saying, well, why do we have a trillion dollar budget deficit? And what that tells me is we do not have a revenue problem. Our revenues are just fine. We have an overspending problem.

And I will blame both the Republicans and the Democrats for that. You know, the Republicans want to spend more money in the military. The Democrats want to spend more money in social programs. So what do we do? We spent more money on both.

Both, right. And that's why we have a deficit. Okay. And are you good with this? Are we good that we keep going on a few of these things? Is this okay? Okay. I love it.

I love it. I have friends in the know. I won't say who they are. They think they're in the know. They say this is not, you know, the Democrats will tell you this is an Obama economy. And Trump then immediately took credit for the economy when it was going well after his plan was instituted. And even prior to that plan, being put in he was too because let's be honest most of

this stuff just happening now as you said I have a lot of friends that say it's neither it's a fed economy a fed economy that this has been a quantitative easing this has been a printing money economy and that a that neither one of these two should be taken credit for anything that's happened in the economy. And secondly, that if a recession does come, and I'd like your opinion about this, do you see one coming the next two to four years as most people in your position seem to be predicting, that perhaps it could be a much is a long question of much more extended recession, maybe not as deep, but could be longer because there's not a whole lot to Fed could do to help this time because it's all been done.

So I've been in the policy game now for 35 years, you know, this is what I do, economic policy. So I clearly don't agree with this idea that, oh, it doesn't really matter who the president of this meant policy matters. You know, when you make policy shifts, it makes a big difference. I mean, I live through what I call the three stooches of the American presidency, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, and Jimmy Carter. I mean, it just didn't get much worse than that, right? And, you know, by the way, you know, these are pretty amazing statistics. I think you know them, but people are surprised when I say that. From 1968 through 1982, which was a 14, 15 year period, adjusted for inflation. The stock market lost 62% of its value. 62% of its value.

But why? We had high inflation, we had high tax rates, we were doing everything wrong. A big welfare state we'd build up, and the way I like to put it, I have a little bias folks, but I'll just say it, the clouds disperse, the sun came out, and God gave America a round of Reagan. And what a Reagan company.

He came in, cut taxes, cut regulation, restored sound money for expanded trade, and we had one of the biggest booms in the history of the country. And by the way, just so people don't think I'm some kind of partisan economy boomed under rigging. If we were even faster under Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton was a genuine new Democrat. I mean, can you think of any of these Democrats in the stage today who would say the era of big government is over now?

Would any of them cut the capital gains tax? Would any of them promote free trade and that thing? We had the biggest retraction of government spending under Bill Quentin since Harry Truman was president. So my point is that when you get things right, things go well. And then I believe that the Obama recovery you know, recovery, I don't believe this is the fact. It was the weakest recovery out of from a recession since the end of World War II. And Trump capitalized that. A lot of people would say, gee, why are

people voting for Donald Trump? Everything's so good in America. Well, you know what? Yeah, if you lived here in, you know, in Laguna Beach, California, or lived in Yeah, if you lived here in Laguna Beach, California, lived in Hollywood, if you lived in Silicon Valley, if you lived in where I lived, the swamp of Washington, D.C. or Wall Street, things were going great. Things. But, you know, when I was on that presidential campaign, we went to, we would go to places like your repensalvania, and we'd go to Charleston, West Virginia, and we'd go to Frankfurt, Kentucky, and we would go to Ashkush with Consent.

And I would say, you know, I'd talk to the folks, and I'd say, how is that Obama recovery going for you? You know what they'd say? What recovery you're talking about? There is no recovery here in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife,

in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Eurypensife, in Euryp answer to this in one year. You know, because people are gonna decide. So you think that our recession could be pending, but you think it has something to with who gets elected into the...

Well, look, at any point in time, as you know, there's always a 15 or 20% chance in the next year or two. So when you ask me, is there gonna be a recession next three years? That's probably a 50-50 chance, you know, I mean, you know, because economies do go through cycles, there's all sorts of things that could happen, but I'm pretty confident. I think this is a good economy. If we can get this trade deal done with China, it's a mini deal. It's not a great deal, but I think that'll take a lot of the pressure off, because one

of the things I'm worried about right now is that there's not enough capital spending by businesses. Now, in terms of the Fed, I I mean this is an amazing, I can't fight, I have to confess, I can't quite figure this out. I mean do you ever think we'd have an era of negative interest rates? I mean it's the same. It's crazy. I mean you can who buys even like you're in the US? Who buys a 30 year treasury bill at 2% interest rate? I mean do you think the next 30 years we're going to have less than 2% inflation? Yes.

And by the way, when you buy a negative interest rate by what you're saying is that you're paying the government to hold on to your money. You'd be better off taking your money, putting in a suitcase and bearing it in your back. 100% 100% 100% What's going on here? So I have to say, I'm mystified by this, but one of the things I've advised the Trump administration to do, I had a Wall Street Journal article about this a few weeks ago. My God, as long we've got two percentage rates, we should be issuing 50, 100-year bonds, and locking in these low interest rates forever, because I don't always admit when I'm wrong,

but I've been wrong. Every speech I've given for last 10 years, I say, well, interest rates can't go any lower, and they keep incredible. Right, incredible. I mean, when you and I were, I don't know exactly how old you are, I'm almost 60. When I was in high school, the more interest rate was almost 20%. I lived through a big deal. Now you can get a three and a half percent more interest rate. It's unbelievable. I know. It's unbelievable.

So okay, so I want to give you a couple things. I wonder why there's this perception in the country. One of the things that does tweak me is just when facts aren't told accurately. So there's this notion, and as you know, that the rich aren't paying their fair share, that somehow the top 1%, somehow avoids taxation, which we both know isn't true. The top 1%, you know the stats better than I do.

They pay 40% of the income tax. I mean, that's incredible. They pay almost 40% of the income and they earn about 21% of that income. So they earn 21% of it, but they pay 40% of the tax revenue. So it's just an absolute untrue that the top don't pay their fair share.

And then when they add another statistic that. And the bottom 50% pay no federal income tax. Yeah, they pay maybe 2% or something like that. They pay all stuff. So it's a highly progressive system. Right. Now, I hear all this talking, let's go back to the golden age when we had 70 and 80 and 90 percent tax rates.

Well, you know what? This will surprise a lot of your viewers and listeners. Back then, the rich actually paid a smaller share of the income tax than they do now. Okay. You know why? No. Because rich people have tax accounts and they didn't pay those rates. What I'm for is the flat tax.

Right. No deductions, no loot polls, no special interest provision. You can't hide your money from the IRS. Everybody pays a rate, I don't know, if it's 17 or 18% if you're a family for your first $30,000 of income is tax-free. You fill out your tax for my tax.

I mean, I'm not a rich guy. I'm not rich. I'm doing pretty well, but I'm not rich. I had the 200 page tax return. It's ridiculous. Why is that never gained traction? Is that because there would be a reduction for the top rate?

I'll tell you why. Because do you think anybody in Washington wants a flat tax? All the power we talk about the swamp, the tax code isn't a swamp. It's all tax attorneys and tax lawyer. Why would you come to be lobbyists? Do you think a lobbyist wants a flat tax?

So if you feel strongly about that, you have Trump's ear. Why is that not something he'd go run on? Well, we tried to sell them on it. That's why we wanted to bring the rates down. Lower. This is why, look, if you were introduced 50, 60, 70, 80% tax rates, I guarantee you, with them three years, you're going to have so many loopholes in that tax code. I mean, it's just the natural course of events.

Right. And that's the worst tax system of all. I want to low rate with a broad base. And it seems like the left wants a high rate. And by the way, some of people just say, we want to be punitive. We don't even care if it raised revenue. We just want to sap the rich.

I have a problem with that. Who does that help? It's there. I'm gonna leave that alone. But I don't think it's a way. Yeah, I mean, who does that help? What do you feel about universal basic income from Mr. Yang?

People are looking at that. They like it. How do you feel about that? You know, my big, I'm not totally against that. Wow. Wow. But what worries me is that it becomes a disincented for work. Look, what we need Americans to do is work. One of the problems we had in the bottom of years,

we still have in the Trump years, we got a lot of Americans on the sidelines who could be working and should be working. And look, people who work longer have longer life. Work is a good thing, actually. Work gives you a self-worth. It expands your people retireer, actually, die at a younger age than people who continue to work.

So work gives you a purpose in life, I think. Don't you agree with that? And so I don't want people on the sideline. I don't want the government giving people, I do think, look, we're a rich country. People should be able to have health care. We want housing for everyone, so on. But I don't want to disincentivize people to work.

That's why I don't want to heightach rates. That's why I don't want big wealth or giveaways. I do think, look, if you work 40 hours a week, you should have a guaranteed income. And not necessarily the employer providing it that will provide you a subsidy. If you're working, you got to work though. If you're sitting on the sidelines, no, we're not going to subsidy.

Then how's that different than just raising the minimum wage? And why would you have that? I'll tell you why. Because if you raise the minimum wage, then all of the cost is borne by the employer. What's the employer going to do? You hire people. If you, you know, I always say, you know, $15, $16 on a minimum wage, I have two teenage boys.

I love them, the death, I don't always like them, but I love them. And I really am. I really am. But you'd be insane to pay these kids $15, $16. Now I don't want to price people out of the work market. Do you remember the first job you had when you were kid? I do too.

I was working a little factory, a bus boy. I was working a little factory filling orders, you know? And you learn a lot from the first job you had when you were getting? I do too. I was working a little factory, a bus player. I was working a little factory filling orders. And you learn a lot from your first job. Sure. How to show up? How to be nice to your boss? How to just be an employee. I don't want to price those jobs out of the market.

Because the first job, oftentimes, is the most important job. Well, the consumer pays a price for that, too. They do. You're going to have a $7. So what I'm talking about is you let the market set the wages, and if some people fall below what we would consider, you know, you might be free, universal, basic. The government would subsidize, but you have to work.

It has to be tied to work. That is shocking and reasonable. I think that's it. By the way, that would, here's the thing. We already spend over a trillion dollars on all these welfare programs. So we could easily do that with the money we're already spending. But you're assuming, that's not how it works though, you're assuming that somehow there'd be a given take.

Exactly, but that's not going to be the problem. Government programs aren't taken away. That's right, that's what I'm saying. Let's get rid of all the welfare programs. We'll be a grand bargain. Yeah, that's the grand bargain. Okay, a couple more things. Because there is this good news, and I think you've made some really great points, of which

is mainly drowned out by the chaos and noise that we hear out of the executive branch and the media that covers the executive branch. And so I've heard you say that you're obviously your huge supporter of President Trump. Do you agree that to some extent, that if we could quiet some of this noise that perhaps would be healthier for the country Whether that be tweeting or some of the comments can you make a comment about that if you have a criticism if you're willing to offer One up of the thousands of things you love about the president the economy where it's going What is one thing you you'd say I kind of wish this didn't exist? There's got to be something I've told the president this and he doesn't like to hear it, but you know

I want this president to be the president of all the people all the people it's one thing to be running campaign and you're you know going out and trying to get your you know your voters stood up and I went to the rallies they were a lot of fun I mean they were amazing political events culture events but you know then you're elected and be that you don't represent just the people voted for you you represent all Americans. And I think if I have one criticism with Trump, it's that. Reach out to the people who didn't vote for you.

Don't just always appeal to your base. And I would like to see more of that from Trump, because I think he would be more effective that way. And I think the tweeting, one more I have is there is chaos. And there's always, Trump is almost feeds on chaos. And I do worry the Americans people are just getting tired of it. Fatigue.

You know, fatigue, right? Trump fatigue. And I worry about it. I told the president, you know, stop tweeting so much. You don't have to comment on everything that happens every moment of the day. Unless you're going to tweet on me, then you can do that. And he's done that a few times and my book sales go off when he does, but I agree with that.

I think he is sometimes his own worst enemy. It seems an awful lot of the time. A couple more questions regarding that. Tell us something about him, so there are people watching this that are fans of his, and there's people here that, as you know, aren't his fans. Well, couple things. So, what do you know about him? We don't.

It's a great question. That is a great question. So I have a book called Trump Anomics that I wrote with my friend Art Laffer. We'll put it on the screen a couple of years ago. And the first couple chapters, I think the most interesting, is just about how we met Trump and how we got to work for him and what he's liked to work for. And I say in the book that when I first met Trump, which was remember there were like 15 Republicans running president I think I knew 14 of them. I knew Jeff Bush and I knew I know Mokal Rubin I knew new doctors pen cars and the only one I had never met was Donald J. Trump And so you know what we get a call that would you like to meet with Trump?

And you know, I was I was curious about him because there was something going on in this country And I you know, it surprised me as much as it did anybody curious about him because there was something going on in this country and you know it surprised me as much as it did anybody. So we went in about January of 2016 and sat down with Trump and you know we went up the escalator, up the Trump tower, went up to and and first of all I was impressed by the fact that all the people around him you know his secretaries and his assistants and the people they loved the guy you know and you can tell something about you know person by how they treat the people that work for them. And I was impressed by that.

And then we spent about an hour in the room with them and had a great conversation. And he likes to argue, which I like to do too. So I don't agree with you. I'm not talking about that. But I got to tell you. I walked out of that room and I had stars in my eyes. I was like, wow, this guy is going to be the next president of the United States. And I don't know what it's exactly. You know, I think, you know,

I've always said there were three presidents in my lifetime who had the kind of that X factor that just connects with people. Wemble Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, the three of them, you know, I've been in politics and they walked in a room, they lit up the room, you know, the, but Trump sort of has that himself to that ex-factor. And the other thing I'd say about him is that, you know, and I say this is a joke, you know, and sometimes it gets them, you know, 95% of politicians are going to be our wonderful people in public in jerks and private. Trump is a jerk in public and a wonderful person in private.

And really, I mean, when you meet him personally, he could not be a more charming, more, and he's always come to my personal, I consider him a personal friend because he's always been really good to me. So he's a good man. He's the other thing I'll say about him, we were talking about this off the camera. The guy's the Energizer Bunny.

I mean, I've never seen anybody with more energy than Donald Trump, and he's, how old is he? He's like 70, something. 73, 74. Yeah, and he's how old is he? He's like 70 something. 73 to 70. Yeah. And you know, he was running circles around me, you know, and we'd do three or four events a day and he's just always going, you know, he called me up at one thirty in the way.

Hey Steve, what are you doing? Sir, I'm sleeping. I heard people are. Right. So I think I'm serving up four or five hours of sleep. One of the things, and I obviously have seen that he's a, he's a haught. He works hard. One of the things, and I obviously have seen that, he's a host, he works hard. One of the things that I've observed about you

and most people that I consider to be people I trust with decision making, they don't seem all that concerned with what people perceive them as. In other words, they work in concern with what they stand for, what they believe in, then they are necessarily, even today, that I agree with everything you say

or the audience does. I think it's an odd thing in him. It appears that he cares so deeply about these perceptions. It feels like candidly, like an emotional weakness of his, that he cares so deeply about the people's opinions all the time. I know. So, you know, look, every, every great leader throughout history, with a few exceptions, would have some fatal flaws.

And that's his fatal flaw. I mean, a Shakespearean middle flaw. And Trump has that Shakespearean flaw. And I think he's in a lot of ways. He's a great business leader. I think he's a really good president. But you're right. I think he cares way too much about what people think about him.

And he's very thin-skinned. You know, when I'm on TV, you know, eight out of ten things, I'll say about them are positive. But when I go see them, what do you think he remembers? Right. The two out of ten things, I say that it ain't. But ironically, that's what makes you believable, in my opinion. What makes you believable and relatable is that not everything is perfect all the time when you're describing it, which is my last question.

And I want to make sure, by the way, everyone knows about the crypto market that you're involved with, because you're involved with a company, and then just tell us your overall feeling about this cryptocurrency economy that started, that 99.9% of the people in the world have no understanding of frankly, including me who is an actual investor

in a few of these places. So I'm glad we've left some time to talk about this. So I'm a big believer. I think it's the next big thing. You do. I really do. I think because of the blockchain, it's almost all transactions in the future will be done via electronic transfers of funding and so on.

And I think there are two big advantages to crypto, or what I call kind of digital currencies. And we think we've got a great product that pracks. Number one is privacy. You know, why should the government have a monopoly on money? You know, why not have private monies? This, by the way, this freaks out people in Washington. People at the Federal Reserve Board are freaked out about it. The SEC is freaked out about the commodities future trade

incorporation. You know, the Treasury Department, they don't want it. They want to maintain their monopoly over money. I like the idea of having private competitors to government money, because for one thing, I think it keeps them honest. And so there's that. You'll have privacy.

You can make transactions with a cryptocurrency like a frax without the government knowing what you're doing. And people say, oh, well, that just means drug runners and criminals are going to use it. No, 99.95% of and criminals are going to use it. No, 99.95% of the people are going to use this are law-biting people, just, you know, I'm kind of libertarian. I don't want the big brother of knowing what I'm doing.

So that's one advantage. The second advantage is that because we have a, what we think is a very effective digital currency, by the way, our currency called Frax, FRAX, will be tied in value to the dollar. So one Frax will be one dollar. And there are other, you know, there's this one big one called Libra. I don't know if you've heard about this one. This is Facebook's big initiative. It hasn't gone so well last few months.

Business companies have been dropping out of it. But they're linking their currency, their Libra, to a basket of other, you know, currencies. We think that's, we think the dollar is more stable. The advantage of this is that the transaction costs of using a cryptocurrency like a fraction are much smaller than they are if you use a credit card or use PayPal or whatever. You can't use a dollar bill in an electronic. We think the transaction costs, now somebody making $100 of purchases, that's not gonna be a big deal.

But if you're talking about millions of dollars of purchases, that saving of one or two or three percent is significant. Okay, and a global economy too. Speaking of that, two more questions. China, you mentioned China earlier, and if I don't ask about it, people will be frustrated. Clearly, it looks like this mini deal is being struck that is probably to our benefit.

I think even a lot of Democrats are excited about the fact that he's taken this on. What about the criticism that as we've made a few of these deals, although they've been wins, that we are a partner in a global economy, which seems to be in a recession, the global economy, that there's this ancillary damage that's been done to our relationship with many of these countries where we have struck deals that are in our favor, but maybe the long-term relationship with even countries that are allies of ours isn't so favorable. How do you feel about that? Well, there's two couple points.

Number one, China is a nemesis. They are a menace right now. And I don't say that with any joy. I mean, for 30 years after Mao died, Mao was one of the greatest villains, whoever, you know, stepped on the planet, he killed tens of millions of his own people. But once they moved from communism and they moved towards, you know, they back in the late 70s, they moved towards a more free enterprise free market type, not entirely, but they moved in that direction.

And then you have one of the great, you know, things that ever happened in history with the, you know, literally half a billion people moved out that direction. And then you have one of the great things that ever happened in history with literally half a billion people moved out of poverty. They became a middle class country in a very short period of time. So it was a great success story. But in the last seven or eight years, they've moved in the opposite direction. Look what's happening in Hong Kong. Whether it's trying to...

I think the people's quote, liberation argument, liberators, they're not liberators, is going to move into Hong Kong. Look what they're doing in terms of, you know, they're building up their military in a very aggressive way. Circa, Japan, 1939. So I think Trump deserves a lot of credit for calling them out and saying, wait a minute,

these are no longer friends or allies. This is, this country is an adversarial power. I also think that Trump did the right thing and basically saying, look, we can't go, we were in an abusive relationship with China. I mean, we've opened up, for 30 years, we opened up our markets to them. They have never opened up their market stocks. Now, I'm a free trader. I believe in free trade. But, you know, I remember that meeting we had that I was talking about with Trump. He said, you know, look, I believe in free trade,

but it's got to be a level playing field. And it's not a level playing field. And it was one thing when China was a $45 billion trillion dollar economy. Now they're, what, 14. You know, they're a big boy now. They've got to play by the rules. And they won't. And less Trump uses the leverage that he has to get them to do it.

Has he been successful, so far? You know, it's tough. I mean, I think he's fighting the right fight with China. And Trump used to say to me, look, we can't trade with China, we sneeze if they can't trade with us, they catch pneumonia. And there's a lot of truth to that. They need our consumer market.

So now, you pointed to him, I think, a strategic mistake that he has made. One of the great lessons of history is you don't fight a multi-front war. That's the problem. The Germans made many times. So you don't pick a fight with everybody at the same time. And I think going after Canada, Mexico, and the Europeans,

by the way, he has some legitimate gripes with the Europeans. They don't always play by the rules either. But I think it would have been a much better situation. What we need to do in my opinion is isolate China. Right, you agree. Yeah, and I wish he would do that. We got to pass Nancy Pelosi if you're watching this, pass the US, Mexico, Canada, trade agreement. That would be a big plus for the world economy. But this is unknown.

This is the one big unknown whether Trump can pull this off. The Chinese, they're patient people. They may, their economy is getting rocked by these terrorists, but they may just say we're going to wait out Trump. I hope I'm wrong about that. I hope you're wrong too. Last question. There's an election coming. What? Yeah. That's what I'm told. And whether, I think I know who you think's going to win and who you want to win, but I want you to talk about this finally. And it's something because you're involved in the media. I watch you on Fox the other night.

I've seen you on CNN. So these are colleagues of yours to some extent. One of the things that frustrates me the most, and this is not political left or right, is the bias in the media. Obviously, Trump's got this unbelievable, contentious relationship because the the liberal media a partner of the Democrats and somewhat argue that somewhat Fox News are partners of the Republicans. I have no problem with someone like Sean Hannity

being an advocate and a biased person for a more conservative viewpoint. I think he's transparent about that. I don't think he pretends to be down the middle and I don't think he pretends to be in the news business. I think he pretends to be in the editorial business. My frustration is when I see people on certain channels that pretend to be in the middle,

pretend to be news people that we know are bias, and then I see these same people hosting debates. So they're narrators of debates, and we know going in, and the more and more I'm hearing the phraseology of even the questions in these debates, they're skewed with a bias towards them. Just talk to the audience from your perspective as they start watching this coverage because for most people they're watching it a little bit.

But over the next five, six, seven months, the vast majority of Americans are going to start getting their news through these cameras and through their phone. What would you tell them about what they're seeing being reported? Do you agree that there's a bias in almost all the reporting they're saying nowadays? That's a different question. I mean, of course there is. I mean, I spent two years, I'd last two years until recently with CNN, fake news.

And look, it was the hate Trump network. I mean, literally 95% of the guests that they would come on would trap. I mean, just turn it on any time and look, it's all crashing Trump. Hour after, after hour. It's, by the way, that's a tragedy to me. I love Ted Turner's idea, you know,

what C&M was supposed to be. Remember when he's a 24 hour news network where he could actually find out it's happening. I just want to inject one thing. So people listen to this, we probably go, I agree with you, and you know what that's been? That's been a response to what Fox did to Barack Obama. Well, that is true.

Like, except, you know, Roger Ailes was a genius. I know that there's this Netflix thing about him that makes him out like it. And I don't know about his sexual experience, but I'm just saying, what he recognized is something we as conservatives have been complaining about for 40 years, which is that, yeah, you could watch three networks and they were all liberal. And he recognized, hey, there's 40% of the country that's conservative and they're not being served and he tapped into that market. Fox News is a conservative network and CNN and MSNBC are extremely liberal.

But I know this from being in the newsroom, I spent 10 years with Wall Street Journal. Most journalists are liberal just by their orientation. And so what Trump did actually kind of effectively, I think, was, it drove the mainstream media crazy. He did it run around, run around. You asked me, why does he tweet so much? Partly because he feels like I can get directly into the theater without going through the media.

I do, I just wish there were some network out there that just, if I were to turn on the TV right now, I just want to know what's going on in the world. I don't want somebody's opinion about Trump or in positive or negative. What's going on? What's going on with the stock market? What's going on in the, and I think there's a market

that I think it's too bad. The other thing I would say, I think this is true about the schools too. We have a public government school system because we want to teach people how to think, how they can be productive and educated and informed citizens. This is not, you know, original to me, but I think it's so true. Now our schools don't treat people how to think, but what to think. And the media does the same thing. They're not trying to present you with the evidence and you can make it. They're trying to tell you

what you should think and I think people are getting sick of it. I do. And that's why I think things like today are so valuable and I want to do more of them. And again, everybody next week. Well, you're gonna have my buddy, a friend, Austin on it, right? There's a different side of the aisle. He actually, you would be surprised. He and I probably agree on 60%. I can't wait to tell him that you're open to Universal Basic Inc. I think he's gonna love that. But we get rid of the world first. But I just want the audience basic income. I think he's gonna love that. But we can't read it all over the world first. But I just want the audience to know, I'm glad we finished with that because I think,

I don't believe that network exists. I don't believe Fox is fair and balanced and I certainly don't think CNN's down the middle. And I think MSNBC is raise their hand and said, look, we're out there left, right? I just, I don't appreciate who's in the middle today. That's my goal. I don't think it exists. And that's okay. That's okay because you know why CNN did it? Because it drives ratings. They watch Fox's my. I don't think it exists. Yeah. And I and that's okay. That's okay because you know why CNN did it because it drives ratings. They watch. Well, there's aren't very good, but that could

be argued because it's divided up between the two. They just taked right? Well, we know my ratings are going up because you're here today. So Steve, thanks so much for today. Let's do it again. I enjoyed it. Everybody. If you enjoyed it, remember next week you'll hear the other perspective. If you get a chance, go buy Steven's books if you want to hear more about his perspective. And make sure every day on Instagram, you're following me in the max out two-minute drill and make a post every day, 730 Pacific, 1030 Eastern. And I want to engage with you.

You'll meet some of my guests. You can come see me speak, tickets to events, my book, gear, right on the jet with me, all kinds of cool stuff. We pick, and it's cool, and we pick a winner every single day. So all you got to do is make a comment in the first two minutes, number one, or comment on other people's comments, start communicating, or just comment every day on every post. We pick winners at the end of the week or just engage with me every day.

I'd love to hear more from you. God bless you and max out. This is the end of my show.