RUSH: Joshua in Sylmar, California. Hi. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. How you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Excellent. Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I have a quick question. I've been hearing reports -- plenty of reports -- saying top 1%, uhh, own 42% of the wealth in America, and the wealth distribution hasn't been this lopsided since before the Great Depression; and my -- my question is: The way I see it, if there's no more money to be distributed, where exactly is someone like me -- a college graduate, you know, in the middle class...? Where's my...? Where's my opportunity for -- for advancement? You know what I mean? Because the way I see the top 1%, they're holding their money in investments and, you know, accounts, but they're not spending the money.
RUSH: No, that's not it.
CALLER: There's no money. They're not spending it. If they have -- if they have all their houses, all their boats, they have everything they need, they don't need to spend money like we spend money.
RUSH: Joshua? Joshua, you have asked a very timely question with an opportunity here for me, in my answer, to educate gazillions of people. But I don't have time before the next break. So I need to ask you, politely and admirably, if you can hold on through it next segment at the top of the hour?
CALLER: I can do that.
RUSH: You can? I appreciate that. Now, you say you're a college student?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: You're 23 years old?
CALLER: Correct. Graduating in June.
RUSH: Graduating in June. And you think...? Just make sure I heard right. You think the top 1%, they've got everything they need. They've got their boats, planes, houses and so they're not spending anymore and, therefore, there's no more money to be distributed. Therefore, no money for you to be paid if you get a job?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Correct. Okay, good. That is... I understand totally why you think that.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: But I want you to know that you could not have been more ill-informed about something than whoever it is that's put that thought in your head. You are... Well, not you. That is as wrong as any lie anybody has ever told you, and I'm looking forward to the chance to explain this when we talk again at the top of the next hour. Don't go away. Please don't go away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now we go back to Joshua in Sylmar, California. Joshua, thank you for holding on. I appreciate you doing this.
CALLER: No problem.
RUSH: You're twenty-three years old, and you think there's no future for you because the people who have what they want and need have got it. They don't spend any more; there's nothing for you to get. Correct?
CALLER: Correct. Yes.
RUSH: Now, I want to tell you: At any time here during my explanation to you, feel free to interrupt and ask me a question.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: The reason I wanted to hold you over and talk to you is because there are a lot of people who think like you do because it's what you've been taught and I want to try to not convince you but show you how wrong you are because your future depends on it.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: You have every bit as much of an opportunity to make something of yourself as I did, and I continue to have. There's nobody shutting you out. There's no way that all the money in the country's locked up, inaccessible to you. It's not locked up and inaccessible to anybody. The thing is: You have to earn it. It's not given; it's not distributed. There is nobody in charge of who gets what. That's up to you. I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you a story about a rich guy. I want to tell you a story about a guy that's in the top 1%. This guy has an airplane. He has --
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: Pardon?
CALLER: I'm listening.
RUSH: He has a boat. He has a large house. He's got eight automobiles. He's pretty much probably what you think of when you think of the 1%.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: This guy who you probably think's got what he wants and doesn't spend any money, spends three hours every week paying bills, writing checks to people. This guy has 75 people who work for him. He pays each and every one of them. Over 20 years, only one has left. Nobody has been fired. He pays them much more than they would earn elsewhere because he loves them and likes them and doesn't want them to leave, because it's too big a hassle to replace them. People that work in his house, people that fly his airplane, people that captain his boat, sometimes earn twice what other people who do the same thing make. Because he likes them, they do a great job, and he doesn't want them to leave. When this guy takes his airplane someplace, there are three people he's paying on it.
There's a flight attendant and there are two pilots. I don't know what the total amount they're paid is, but the amount that those three people are paid, if they were one person would put them in the top 1%. All you have to do is earn $387,000 a year in America and you are in the top 1%. If you earn $50,000 a year or more, Joshua, in a year, you're in the upper 10% of earners in this country. The top 1%, bottom of that is $387,000. When this guy gets on his airplane, in addition to these three people, there's what's called the line crew. They work at the gas station that puts fuel in the jet. That fuel costs anywhere from four to five dollars a gallon, and it takes so much that you buy it by pounds. People who work for the gas station also are paid by the guy who owns the airplane.
So, in addition to the three people that are on the airplane, there are probably five or six servicing the airplane. Then there's the mechanic in the hangar that services the airplane when it's not flying. There are probably 10 or 12 people being paid to make sure that airplane can fly whenever it needs to. All of them make six figures, except the line crew. I'm not sure what they make, they're paid by another company, but the company charges a lot. It's the same thing with the boat, same thing with the house. The idea that the rich are not spending their money is so absurd. If the rich were not spending their money, we'd be a Third World country.
If the rich weren't spending their money, there would be no jobs. Unemployment wouldn't be 9%; it would be 100%. Now, I don't know where you get the idea that because there are rich people you don't have a chance, but it's precisely because there are rich people. What we have here is a meritocracy. I mean, there are some people who are rich because they inherit it. But most people who are in the 1% are there because they work harder than anybody else, because they found what they love doing, and what they do really isn't work to them. They can't wait to get up every day (including on Mondays) to go back to work because it's what they love most in the world -- and since they love it, they happen to do it better than most other people do.
That's how they end up making a lot of money: They provide a service, or make a product, do something that enough people want and love that it supports them. Now, there are a lot of other people out there who will criticize people like this, saying that they're not paying their fair share, that they're selfish or they're greedy or what have you. There's another thing, too, that you need to know: The people in this top 1%, it's not the same bunch of people. It changes. People move into and out of the various categories of wealth all the time. I knew a guy who lost $200 million twice in his life and earned it back a third time. He was in the commodities business. You are gonna be getting out of college soon, and somebody's told you that there's no future for you.
Because unless you can find a way to get the rich to unlock their money, there isn't anything left for you. You couldn't be more wrong. If you would change your thinking and realize that whatever it is you've learned in college, if it's what you love -- and if it's not what you love, go do what you love and forget what you learned in college. Find out what you love, go do it, do it better than anybody else, and you'll find that there will be all kinds of people who will pay you to do it. If you do it well, if you do it dependably, if you make it well, if you make it great, if you make it dependably, if you can be counted on, if you can be trusted, if your stuff is great, if your work is great, there will be people who will pay you more than you ever dreamed.
CALLER: And, Rush, I get that. It makes sense for the individual, and I'm happy for me. You know, and -- and I understand that for me personally. But what I'm talking about my generation as a whole. The way I see it, there's only a certain amount of money; and the way I see it, the top 1% have invested in all the vehicles possible to make sure they continue to make more money.
RUSH: No.
CALLER: And because they have more money in the vehicles they can make money faster. So as you get --
RUSH: No, no.
CALLER: The argument goes, the rich get richer --
RUSH: Joshua?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: At any point that you want to point to in American history, there has always been X amount of money. But every day it's different. Hopefully, the US economy grows. It's an expanding pie. It gets bigger. What's happening to our economy now is, it's shrinking. It is shrinking because people running the government have the incorrect policies. They are funneling all the money to government, Joshua. They're doing everything they can to take money out of the private sector where you are going to earn it. For you to do well, the government has to get smaller, and the money that they're taking from people has gotta be kept with the people because they can grow their own businesses and thus hire more people. But at any point, in any generation, somebody in any generation coulda said as you just said, "Somebody's got all the money. There's only so much money." On any given day, there's only so much money, but everybody parts with it. Nobody hoards everything they've got. My point to you was: A guy just spends three hours a week paying bills. What do you think he's paying?
CALLER: Yeah, I know and I understand that.
RUSH: How many...? But every rich person's doing this. There's not a rich person in the world not spending his money. They can't live if they don't spend the money. There's no way to enjoy it if you don't spend it! They're all spending it.
CALLER: All right. Rush, can I give you...? Can I give you a quick prediction?
RUSH: Are you hearing anything I'm saying? I'm really trying to help you because if you listen to what I'm saying, you're gonna go out there and be light years ahead of everybody in your generation who's gonna be sitting around thinking they're defeated because they've been taught like you have that there's no more money to be had. But there is. The rich are happy to part with it if you give 'em something they want or if you do something they need done. The object is you. The objective is you. The person who has to get this done is you. Let me tell you: You know what I once did? I'll tell you another story. I used to know, when he was alive, the former commerce secretary, Robert Mosbacher.
Back in the early nineties Robert Mosbacher told me that you weren't a player in America unless you had $250 million. If you didn't have $250 million, the rest of the wealth community would sneer at you and they wouldn't consider you one of them. I said, "Well, would you give me a hundred million so I could get in the group?" He looked at me and said, "What do you mean, give you a hundred million?" I said, "Yeah, if I just had a hundred million more, then I wouldn't have to work anymore! I could actually support the way I live now, if you would just give me a hundred million." He looked at me. "What do you mean, give you a hundred million?" "Well, you said..." I was performing an experiment.
There was no way he was gonna give me a hundred million, even though he had it times twenty. He wouldn'ta given it to a member of his family, until he died. The point is nobody gives anybody anything. Everybody who has what they have earns it, with work. There's not one power sitting there deciding who ends up with what. Obama would love to be that person, and we're trying to prevent that from happening, but there is not a god. There's not a money god that determines who ends up with what. What you end up with is owing totally to what you do. The US economy is not a zero-sum game. If somebody earns a dollar, it does not mean somebody's lost a dollar.
If somebody loses a job, it doesn't mean somebody was hired. If somebody was hired, it doesn't mean somebody was fired. It is a dynamic, expanding economy, and it's made for the fit. It's made for the competitive. It's made for those who want to play the game and have something to offer. It's not made for people who think they're owed something. It's not made for people who think the game's rigged. It's not made for people who think life's unfair. You have just as much opportunity as Warren Buffett has had or as I've had. It's up to you to use it, and it's up to you to recognize that you do have the opportunity -- and don't worry about your generation. It's not your problem.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: It's theirs. You have enough problems worrying about yourself. If your generation blows it, don't be part of it.
CALLER: Got it.
RUSH: Be distinct. Be different. If your generation is gonna sit around and be a bunch of slothful takers, don't defend 'em, and don't feel sorry for 'em, and don't be part of it. You'll be that much ahead of the game.
CALLER: (garbled) Got it. Could I ask one more question?
RUSH: Uh, yeah, if you take your mouth or hand away from the phone so I could hear you.
CALLER: You hear me now?
RUSH: (aside to audience) He's talking to someone --
CALLER: Hello?
RUSH: Getting advice. What do you want to ask me?
CALLER: (garbled) I just want to -- I just want to say, (unintelligible) stockholder since 2008 and what (unintelligible) although yes, I understand where you're coming from with the rich getting paid.
RUSH: I can't understand what you're saying. I don't know what you're doing out there. You got the phone covered. But I gather you're not hearing me. You've been a stockholder since 2008 and what?
CALLER: (garbled) Put it this way. I've been a stockholder since 2008. What I'm noticing now is that when the average American can't buy the TV from Best Buy, they can't buy -- and I know, and I know they should be saving their money, they --
RUSH: Joshua? Joshua?
CALLER: -- that's who --
RUSH: Joshua?
CALLER: Okay?
RUSH: There is no average American. The average American is a myth. The average American is a statistic. People are buying TVs. They're buying them from Best Buy. They're buying them from Apple. They're buying them from everywhere. TVs are sold! You can go buy one today. Go to a mall and you'll find people buying TVs. People are buying everything today. Not as many people. The economy is not doing well. There aren't as many people working and they don't have as much disposable income. Some people it's their fault, while other people in this day and age it's not (because of policies this administration's put into effect). I feel like I've wasted my time with you, but I hope that to the others in the audience it's not been a waste of time.
You've offered me a great opportunity here, but you're clearly not hearing what I'm saying, or at least you're not acting like you're getting it. I hope at some point that you do. Because, sad as it might be, people like you do represent the future of the country; and if you're gonna sit around and be a taker -- if you're gonna sit around and be bitter, somebody's got more than you do, somebody's not spreading the wealth or whatever -- you're gonna be miserable your whole life, and nothing's gonna be able to make you happy. You're not gonna be able to make yourself happy, nobody else will make you happy, you're just gonna be miserable. And maybe you want to be miserable. Some people do. I don't. I appreciate your holding on.
