August 19, 2024 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, Luck and loud of Michael
Verie Show is on the.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Air as promise, and absolutely eloquent and elegant commentary by
Greg Guttfeld of Fox News after Kamala Harris was criticizing
(00:35):
that businesses are price gauging because she didn't read gouging.
She read gauging because she didn't come up with either notion.
She doesn't even know what that means. They give her
things to say that are meant to upset the peasants.
(00:55):
The rest people are getting all the money. I'm gonna
fight for you. They're taking all your money. Stuff costs
too much. Well, Guttfeld had a wonderful piece where he
pointed out that price gouging is a weak phrase directed
at weaker minds, and boy, is he ever right.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
First, I want to point out something Jessica said that
Trump began as a millionaire and now he's a billionaire.
I think that makes him an expert in this I
would rather listen to somebody who began as a millionaire
and is now a billionaire than somebody who doesn't have
a damn clue about economics.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I've never heard.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
A candidate today more unsure of themselves on a topic
than Kamala Harris. I think she's been burdened by the
weight of expectations put on her by the media. I've
never seen a better campaign ad for Trump. She's campaigning
better for Trump than Trump is. First, let's talk about
the down payment issue on the House. A lot of
this stuff is infuriating because they're treating the American public
(01:58):
like idiots.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
She makes a proposal that is only half an equation.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
The first half is here's a nice.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Thing for you.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
The second half is missing who pays for it? You
saw this with student loan fact described as forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Who paid for it? You paid for it.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
You see with immigration policy, who's footing the.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Billions and all that free stuff?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You're paying for it. Nothing is free. Nothing is free.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And the sooner or.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Lady you figure that out, the better off you're going
to be. And that's directed at Democrats who don't understand
that these policies are going to sink this country. You know,
if you cap prices, you increase scarcity by diminishing competition.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
People can call her a communist, but you got to
you gotta explain.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
This because the media won't ask the follow up questions,
how do you plan on doing this? Please give me
an example. Give me an example where industries got together
in a room they decided to drastically increase prices.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
That doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
The only example they'll have is, oh, you know a
boudet E raise prices on umbrellas when it rained.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
That's all they got.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
There is no payoff for industries to increase artificially inflate
their prices because the people who drive the.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Prices are the consumers.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
That is, if you want to understand supplying demand, it's
the consumers who drive the prices. There is absolutely no
debate on this.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
There is not a.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Single economist who would agree that this is the right
thing to do. We can go and talk about Eastern
Bloc countries. You can look at the chiep terrible cars
that they made, in the appliances they.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Made, but you already know that story.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
So how do you keep a debate alive if we
know this is a fraudulent idea.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
You don't talk to economists.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
You listen to politicians or talking heads like me who
have to do the research, because I'm sick and tired
of hearing people pretend like they know what they're talking
about on TV, but they don't, so you won't see
economists on other shows, other networks. I'm seeing these questions like,
can you give me an example of how this is done?
What are the major industries? What is the right price?
(04:07):
What is too high? What is too low? Can the
government set prices based on not having a knowledge.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Of an industry?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What do you mean exactly by price gouging? How is
that done? Beyond unique exceptions? Price gouging is a weak
phrase directed at weaker minds.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
David Friedberg is the CEO and founder of the Production Board,
an investment holding company focused on innovations in food, agriculture, biomanufacturing,
and life sciences. He absolutely shredded Kamala Harris's claim of
price gouging.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Give this a listen.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
I unequivocally hate socialism. Socialism destroys innovation, destroys productivity, and
destroys individual liberties. Agriculture and food markets have insanely competitive
dynamics because there are commodity markets, there are tons of competitors.
There is no monopoly in making food. There is no
(05:03):
monopoly making CpG products. There is no monopoly in retail.
There is no monopoly in grocery stores. It is a
small margin, highly competitive, highly fragmented, free market, and the
free market works in that everyone is always competing with
each other, creating new productivity improvements, and as a result,
over time, prices come down, except when the government intervenes
(05:26):
and gets involved. So I would argue that the real
cause of price inflation in food is not the supposed
price gouging by corporate players in the ag and food industry,
all of whom are deeply competitive with one another, but
rather is the result of the inflation associated with government
spending and stimulus coming out of COVID. Nick Exhibit one.
(05:50):
The Fed balance sheet from COVID to today, the Fed
balance sheet grew from four point two trillion to seven
point two trillion dollars, a growth of seventy percent. The
Federal reserve one out and they bought assets, and they
issued debt to banks and introduced liquidity into the system
if you go to the next slide.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
As a result, the M two money supply.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Increased from fifty to trillion to twenty one trillion since COVID,
a forty percent increase.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Okay, so now.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
There is more money in the system, so the cost
of everything should go up, which is exactly what we've seen.
We can walk through a couple of the other commodity
price charts from the Saint Louis fed Here is the
price of electricity as an example. The price of electricity
has gone out a little bit less of the M
to money supply. But the truth is when you start
to actually look at AG commodity prices over time, what's
(06:37):
happened is there was certainly a boost coming from COVID,
but the competition and the challenges in overproduction and the
AG markets has started to hit and started to bring
prices back down.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So here's the price of strawberry.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Strawberries today are selling for less than they were pre COVID.
Potatoes are now back to where they were pre COVID.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Now, let me.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Give you some statistics on some of the supposed price
gouging companies in the industry. Craft time Stock pre COVID
was twenty nine bucks a share. Today Kraft tie Stock
is thirty four bucks a share. Twenty nineteen revenue of
twenty five billion, twenty twenty three revenue of twenty six
billion EBITDA on twenty nineteen of six point one billion
EBITDA on twenty twenty three of six point three billion.
(07:17):
There's not a lot of praffit cougy against that. Craft
times has not been able to keep up with the inflation. Starbucks,
which we just talked about, their stock was at ninety
dollars pre COVID and today ninety three bucks. Twenty nineteen
revenue of twenty six billion, operating income of four point
one billion, twenty twenty three revenue of thirty six billion,
but operating income only five point nine.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Margins have come down in Starbucks nick.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
If you pull up the mackenzy chart, this is a
study of the grocery industry. The State of Grocery in
North America twenty twenty three by McKenzie. Accelerating pressures on profitability.
To cope with the pandemics upheaval, grocers have had to
dramatically increase capex increase supplies. As a result, they've seen
a significant impact on margins. Here's the margin profile pre
(08:01):
pandemic and today. Gross margin has declined by two points
from forty seven point six to forty five point six.
Ebitdam margin has declined by one and a half points.
And now let's just go to the final chart, which
is CpG companies the companies that make food and sell
it to consumers. As you can see during the COVID era,
the three year rolling TSR has declined since COVID across
(08:25):
the board, so food companies are seeing food prices come down,
So farmers they're really suffering. Labor costs have tripled since
the pandemic, but they're still having to sell products at
the same price. CpG companies have lower margins and supermarkets
have lower margins, so there is nowhere in the ag
or food supply chain that we are seeing fundamentally price
gouging or profit taking happening. What has happened is the
(08:47):
cost of labor, the cost of moving stuff around, the
cost of fuel, the cost of electricity, the cost of
goods has all risen with inflation because of the increase
in the money supply and federal spending.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
This is for Michael.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Berrish, CNBC being an NBC product, has not been as
pro business as I would like them to be when
it comes to covering the Biden and now Harris campaigns,
which again makes this surprising. Megan Cassella over there says
(09:19):
that Kamala Harris tells donors one thing behind closed doors,
but then goes out and runs as a progressive. That is,
she tells business owners, investment banks, folks who depend on
a thriving economy that she'll be pro business, solid fundamentals
(09:42):
of economics, and then she goes out and tells the peasants, Hey,
those people I just spoke to over there, they want
to steal all your money. Well, we all know this
is happening, but the fact that CNBC's Megan Cassella is
calling it out.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This is.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Important.
Speaker 6 (10:05):
She hasn't stuck to any very clear set of ideological policies.
She's wavered a bit throughout her years in politics. What
was interesting to me today in seeing this plan is
that it's clearly very progressive. Regardless of what she's saying
to donors behind closed doors. She is putting a progressive
bent to her campaign at this point, and that's not
what a lot of people expected or hoped to see.
(10:25):
I've been talking to moderate Democrats who said she could
just run a vibes campaign. She didn't have to get
into policy details at all. They think the best way
for her to win is to do anything to just
distance herself from the far left. Regardless of whether or
not she dives into policy details and she would win.
Clearly she didn't take that advice. She is diving into
policy details that go more left. She might be saying
other things behind closed doors to make sure corporations are
(10:47):
still on her side as well, but clearly she wants
to sort of have this brand of the progressive candidate.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Jade Vance was on Fox Business and he had perhaps
the best one liner about Kamala Harris's economic plan.
Speaker 7 (11:02):
The American people just don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris,
who has been Vice president for three and a half years,
is somehow going to tackle the inflation crisis in a
way tomorrow that she hasn't for the past thirteen hundred days.
Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, It's like
giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
The American people are much smarter than that.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
They don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris represents a
fresh start.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
She is more of the same. It is doubling.
Speaker 7 (11:31):
Down on the failed policies of the Harris administration. To
give Kamala Harris a promotion rather than to fire her,
which is what I think most Americans are going to
do on November.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
One of the things I liked about the Republican Convention
was that it reflected America. There were goalstar parents, there
were parents of children who don't want their child transitioned.
There were small business owners, veterans, there were teachers, there
(12:03):
were mothers, fathers, and I really liked that it represented America.
And that's why I'm very happy that President Trump has
been bringing people on the stage who represent the broad,
rich tapestry that is America, regardless what they look like,
(12:27):
people who share our values. Danielle compos is a Venezuelan
born pilot. President Trump brought him on stage in Pennsylvania,
and he spoke from the heart because he saw what
happened to his beloved Venezuela and he shared it.
Speaker 8 (12:46):
First of all, Hi, everybody, thank you for coming here
and supported the presidential I'm gonna say they first buy
off the speech of my story in English. Then I'm
gonna repeat it in Spanish in order to allow our
Latino waters to understand and hear what the situation is
(13:11):
going on. First of all, as the President of Ray said,
I'm from Venezuela. I left the country in two thousand
and seven because of communism.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
I still have family there.
Speaker 8 (13:26):
There's been family that left my there has left even
before me or continuously living little by little. But going
further back, my grandparents from my mom's.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Side were from Cuba.
Speaker 8 (13:39):
They they were at the university when the communist revolution
was going on, and they end up leaving to Venezuela.
They only had the money they received for us their
wedding present, and they were living in a midhouse, going
to school and trying to, you know, move ahead. My
(14:00):
granddad ended up becoming a doctor and had a family, raising.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Three children, my mom and my two uncles.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
In the early nineteen nineties, Chaviz did a military coup
and right after.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
He run for president.
Speaker 8 (14:16):
My granddad saw the similarities to what was happening.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
In Cuba, and he told.
Speaker 8 (14:21):
Everybody that would listen to him that he was coming.
And everybody was like, no, this is Venezuela, this is
not Cuba. This will never happen to us. And guess what,
it happened to us and has been happening to other
Latin American countries as well. So when they tell you
here it will never happen, that's not true.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
We lived it now here we are.
Speaker 8 (14:42):
So in two thousand and seven we end up leaving
because the socialists and the government started changing the education
system to make it more like the Cuban education system,
and myself ring a bell to what's going on here
as well. So it's extremely important for everybody to keep this.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
In breaks my heart to hear these stories breaks my heart.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Flashback to twenty twenty on CNN how Kamala Harris's campaign
unraveled before the Iowa Caucus.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
How Kamala Harris's campaign unraveled. They obtained the resignation letter
of the Harris campaign state operations director, who is now
joining the Bloomberg campaign. She wrote, it is unacceptable that
with less than ninety days until Iowa, we still do
not have a real plan to win. Our campaign for
the people is made up of diverse talent which is
(15:35):
being squandered by indecision and a lack of leaders who lead.
Speaker 10 (15:41):
Molly.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
That is rough stuff.
Speaker 9 (15:43):
You wrote a fantastic a cover story on Kamala Harris
about a month ago or so.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I'm sure based on what you're reporting.
Speaker 9 (15:50):
Has been a lot of this isn't really a surprise
to you.
Speaker 11 (15:53):
No, what's the surprise is that she has failed to
turn it around despite literally months and months and months
of hearing this kind of frustration. And you hear you know,
it's reporters, it's people inside the campaign, it's people outside
the campaign. It's pretty much every voter that you meet
on the campaign trail who goes to see her, and
the common theme is people want to like her, and
(16:14):
then she doesn't close the deal. She's not able to
articulate a consistent and compelling message that makes those voters
who show up for her, who are interested in what
she's selling, that makes them decide, yes, this is the
candidate I can commit to. And the Time story and
a post story today have really laid out this frustration,
especially within her team, that she hasn't been able to
(16:35):
make those decisions.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
And she's been all over the place in terms of
the message. Here's a clip to show some of her
kind of all over the place messaging.
Speaker 12 (16:43):
Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom. Our mother would sit up
trying to figure out how to make it all work.
That's something most Americans know all too well. And that's
what my three am agenda is all about.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
He's caring your support.
Speaker 13 (17:00):
She will bring us together.
Speaker 14 (17:03):
This is Trump and in every possible way, this is
the anti.
Speaker 9 (17:08):
Trump and now Tolu her one of the messages is
she's the one who can bring back the Obama coalition
in the way that Obama had.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, they've tried out a.
Speaker 15 (17:17):
Number of different messages over the past several months and
just tried to see what is stuck. And it's been
difficult to follow her campaign because there have been so
many different messages. And one of the biggest debates that
she's having internally is whether she wants to be sort
of the progressive left wing California liberal or whether or
not she wants to be more of a moderate, and
both of those lanes are currently clogged up, and the
fact that she's kind of vacillating between the two of
(17:38):
those makes it difficult for any voter to stick to
her when there are so many other options.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
And Julie, this is a policy heavy campaign, I think
in a way that some folks who got in didn't
necessarily predict and maybe weren't ready for. And then she
has hit the.
Speaker 16 (17:52):
Issues with some of her policies right, and some of
this goes back to the candidate herself. I mean, they
have tried out a lot of different messages and a
lot of different strategies. But as Molly said, it is
her lack of ability to stick to one policy prescription,
one set of policy issues that she really wants to
be her trademark that has put our worship.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Michael Arry Show.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Focus on the border of crime inflation. That's where we win.
When the hearts and minds of people focus. You can't
scattershot fifty eight different things about Kamala just because they bother.
You focus on what matters. Ronaldus Magnus, as Russ used
(18:40):
to like to call him, eloquently and succinctly explained the
cause of inflation.
Speaker 17 (18:48):
Mister Carter became president. Inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running at twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 13 (18:53):
He is blamed the people of living too well. We
don't have.
Speaker 18 (18:56):
Inflation because the people are living too well.
Speaker 13 (18:58):
We have inflation because government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I'm going to play that again because I want you
to learn it and repeat it, because it's powerful.
Speaker 17 (19:09):
Mister cardib became president. Inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running at twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 13 (19:14):
He is blamed the people of living too well.
Speaker 18 (19:17):
We don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation because the government is living too well.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Let me tell you what that inflation did to people.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Because most of us aren't old enough to have been
professional at that time to understand the costs.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
We were just children.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Nineteen eighty November of eighty, when Reagan was elected, the
interest rates were well above ten percent. Because when you
have inflation, the only way with your monetary policy you
can suck the air out of the inflation balloon is
(19:57):
you have to constrict the cash the currency. So your
monetary policy has to be nobody can get a loan.
How do you keep people from getting a loan? You
drive the interest rate up high. That's what you do
to try to battle inflation, to bring the cost down,
to bring sorry, to bring the prices down. The cost
(20:19):
doesn't change, the price has come down, that's the goal.
That's what happened under Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Kamala
Harris are just Jimmy Carter three point zero Jimmy Carter,
Barack Obama, Joe Biden. These policies have the same damned
effect every time. But there's a new audience with each
new generation. And when that happened, I was talking to
(20:40):
Charlie Hartland. Charlie is a well he spent most of
his career with inspirity, but before that he was a
home builder, And I said, why did you stop being
a homebuilder And he said, well, under Carter, the interest
rates were so high that nobody could borrow to build
a new to buy a new home.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So what'd you do?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
He said, Well, first, I had a family to feed,
so I first started by instead of building new homes,
I would renovate the homes that people were in because
they couldn't afford a loan to buy a new house.
And I still had mouths to feed and guys, you know, workers.
So that's what he did until he couldn't any longer.
(21:23):
Then he went to work for what was in administaff
and became inspired and had a great career. But he
was talking about how inflation had hurt him because the
response to inflation is high interest rates, which is why
we have had to have highest rates because of the
inflation that this government has cost. And I'll play it
(21:43):
again because I want you to understand, because Ronald Reagan
is absolutely right.
Speaker 17 (21:48):
When mister Carter became president, inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running a twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 13 (21:54):
He is blamed the people of living too well.
Speaker 18 (21:57):
We don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation because the government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
The great Milton Friedman once called inflation the true tax.
Speaker 14 (22:13):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one thing only, how much government is spending, because
that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There is
no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're paying
for it if you're not paying for it through it
in the form.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Of explicit taxes.
Speaker 14 (22:33):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing.
Speaker 10 (22:37):
The thing you should keep your eye on is what
government spends.
Speaker 14 (22:42):
And the real problem is to hold down government spending
as a fraction of our ind And.
Speaker 10 (22:48):
If you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The problem is politicians want to make promises. They don't
pay for it. You do, but they don't make a
promise to say give me your money that I may
give it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
To someone else. They appeal to your heart.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's the right thing to do that we spend this
money on this thing. I don't believe the American people
want so many billion dollars to have gone to Ukraine.
And the way this argument is couched is if you
(23:35):
can't afford dinner tonight, just remember Vladimir's Zelensky.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Sure can.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Instead of giving that money to Zelensky and Ukraine, we
could have given it to you. Government shouldn't need to
take your money to give it back to you. Government
shouldn't need to take your money to give it back
to you. Governments should let you keep your money. You
(24:06):
earned it, and when they tell you you're greedy. The
left will tell you you're greedy for not wanting to give
more of your money to other people and let the
politicians get the credit by collecting it first before they
hand it to them. If I wanted to give my
money away, I would give it to charity, and I do,
(24:28):
but I don't need to rout it through the government.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That's not hoow that works.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But the government wants the credit for taking your money
and giving it to those people. That's not charitable any longer.
That's not an act of kindness. But in so doing
they harm you by taking that which you've earned and
(24:56):
they harm the person they give it to because they
lose the ability. Like the bear they tell you not
to feed, because they'll they'll lose the ability to forage
on their own the zoo animals. If people don't have
to forage on their own to provide for themselves, they
will grow dependent on a government. And that is exactly
(25:21):
what the Democrats want, and that's where we are.
Speaker 19 (25:24):
Today Michael Berry's show, let's have an economics lesson for
a moment, because it's very important people know they don't
like inflation.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Nobody says, I'm not sure, Michael, I think I might
be in favor of inflation.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Inflation to most people simply means.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
They don't have enough money to buy the things they want.
So in a sense, there is always inflation because we
can never buy as much as we want. Well, that's economics,
the allocation of scarce resources. We all have scarce resources.
(26:16):
We don't have as much money as we'd like. So
we get our first job. We're making fifty thousand dollars
a year. We start that job, we don't have anywhere
to live, we don't have anything to drive, we don't
have clothes to wear to that job.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So what do we do.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
We go borrow money from someone else a bank or
credit card, usually a credit card, and then we're going
to pay them back as we start making money, but.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
We're going to pay them back what we borrowed and
then some.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And this borrowing becomes a crutch because where we do
then we go buy. Then we borrow money for a car,
we borrow money for a house. But that's okay because
we think about how much we're going to pay him
per month and not what we're going to pay them overall.
But it adds up, doesn't it, And we never get
(27:12):
out of that cycle of debt. That's what's happened to
our nation. And so eventually we say, give me more.
I want more money. So the government, without producing more goods,
the government just prints more money. Nobody has spoken more
(27:34):
eloquently in America's history on inflation than Milton Friedman. He
called inflation a disease, and it is. It's a sickness.
It's brought about by the collapse of many nations, or
(27:55):
it's brought about the collapse of many nations in the past.
It is a sickness. You didn't cause it. Only government
can cause it.
Speaker 14 (28:06):
Listen Inflation is a disease. It's a dangerous disease for
a society. It is sometimes a fatal disease for a society.
It's a disease that, if allowed to rage unchecked, can
destroy a society.
Speaker 10 (28:26):
And we have many such examples.
Speaker 14 (28:30):
The classic examples, of course, are the extreme examples of Germany,
of Austria, of Russia after the First World War, when
inflation really did reach levels at which the kind of
apocryphal story I told you was a literal description of
(28:51):
the reality, when inflation reached levels at which employers would
pay their workers three times tis a day after breakfast, lunch,
and dinner so they could go out and spend the
money before.
Speaker 10 (29:04):
It lost all its value. That's the real extreme cases.
Speaker 14 (29:09):
But you don't have to go to such extreme cases
to see the enormous harm which inflation left unchecked can do.
You have the example in many examples in South America.
Brazil before nineteen sixty four was brought down by an
inflation that led to a revolution that toppled the existing
(29:32):
government in order to stem the inflation. In the famous
case of Chile, with mister Elea a Yendi in power,
he produced an inflation which was one of the major
factors that caused the economic catastrophe that led to the
replacement of his government by a military dictatorship.
Speaker 10 (29:54):
We are nowhere near that stage.
Speaker 14 (29:55):
In the United States, but it behooves us as a
nation to pay at ten to this disease, to ask ourselves,
what is the cause of the disease, How do you
cure the disease, What are the effects of the cure,
what are the side effects of it?
Speaker 10 (30:16):
And what will happen if we don't cure it.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Now I want you to understand. You know you've got
this disease, what causes it? Spoiler alert, It's not what
Kamala Harris said price gauging, which she meant price gouging,
but she didn't read the word.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
She has no understanding how this works.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
There is a cancer on this nation that is inflation,
and it's very important that we understand how we got it,
and how you treat it and how you stop it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
So let's go to Milton Friedman again.
Speaker 14 (30:55):
Now, the first step to our understanding the cause of
an is to recognize that it is always in everywhere
a monetary phenomenon.
Speaker 10 (31:08):
It's always in everywhere a result.
Speaker 14 (31:12):
Of too much money of a more rapid increase in
the quantity of money than an output. Moreover, in the
modern era, the important next step is to recognize that
today governments control the quantity of money, so that as
(31:33):
a result, inflation in the United States is made in
Washington and nowhere else.
Speaker 10 (31:40):
Of Course, no government, any more.
Speaker 14 (31:44):
Than any one of us, likes to take responsibility for
bad things.
Speaker 10 (31:48):
Where all of us human.
Speaker 14 (31:49):
If something bad happens, it wasn't our fault, and the
government is the same way, so it doesn't accept responsibility
for inflation.
Speaker 10 (32:00):
Listen to people in Washington talk.
Speaker 14 (32:02):
They will tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen,
or it's produced by grasping unions, or it's produced by
spendthrift consumers, or maybe it's those terrible Arab sheiks who
are producing.
Speaker 10 (32:19):
Now, of course, businessmen are greedy, who of us isn't.
Speaker 14 (32:24):
Trade unions are grasping who of us isn't.
Speaker 10 (32:28):
And there's no doubt.
Speaker 14 (32:29):
That the consumer is a spendthrift at least every man
knows that about his wife. But none of them produce
inflation for the very simple reason that neither the businessman,
nor the trade union, nor the housewife has a printing
press in their basement on which they can turn out
(32:51):
those green pieces of paper we call money. Only Washington
has that printing press, and therefore only Washington can produce inflation.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And since we're on the subject of the Great Milton Friedman,
let's close with a quote we played earlier. It's important
people understand why we have inflation. Inflation is a tax
on the people by reducing your income to pay for
(33:22):
things government has already spent on it.
Speaker 14 (33:26):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one.
Speaker 10 (33:30):
Thing only, how much government is spending.
Speaker 14 (33:32):
Because that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There
is no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're
paying for it if you're not paying for.
Speaker 10 (33:43):
It through it in the form of explicit taxes.
Speaker 14 (33:46):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should
keep your eye on is what governments spent.
Speaker 10 (33:55):
And the real problem is to hold down government.
Speaker 14 (33:57):
Spending as a fraction of our And if you do that,
you can stop worrying about the day.
Speaker 17 (34:06):
M
It's that time, time, time, Luck and loud of Michael
Verie Show is on the.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Air as promise, and absolutely eloquent and elegant commentary by
Greg Guttfeld of Fox News after Kamala Harris was criticizing
(00:35):
that businesses are price gauging because she didn't read gouging.
She read gauging because she didn't come up with either notion.
She doesn't even know what that means. They give her
things to say that are meant to upset the peasants.
(00:55):
The rest people are getting all the money. I'm gonna
fight for you. They're taking all your money. Stuff costs
too much. Well, Guttfeld had a wonderful piece where he
pointed out that price gouging is a weak phrase directed
at weaker minds, and boy, is he ever right.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
First, I want to point out something Jessica said that
Trump began as a millionaire and now he's a billionaire.
I think that makes him an expert in this I
would rather listen to somebody who began as a millionaire
and is now a billionaire than somebody who doesn't have
a damn clue about economics.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I've never heard.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
A candidate today more unsure of themselves on a topic
than Kamala Harris. I think she's been burdened by the
weight of expectations put on her by the media. I've
never seen a better campaign ad for Trump. She's campaigning
better for Trump than Trump is. First, let's talk about
the down payment issue on the House. A lot of
this stuff is infuriating because they're treating the American public
(01:58):
like idiots.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
She makes a proposal that is only half an equation.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
The first half is here's a nice.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Thing for you.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
The second half is missing who pays for it? You
saw this with student loan fact described as forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Who paid for it? You paid for it.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
You see with immigration policy, who's footing the.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Billions and all that free stuff?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You're paying for it. Nothing is free. Nothing is free.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
And the sooner or.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Lady you figure that out, the better off you're going
to be. And that's directed at Democrats who don't understand
that these policies are going to sink this country. You know,
if you cap prices, you increase scarcity by diminishing competition.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
People can call her a communist, but you got to
you gotta explain.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
This because the media won't ask the follow up questions,
how do you plan on doing this? Please give me
an example. Give me an example where industries got together
in a room they decided to drastically increase prices.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
That doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
The only example they'll have is, oh, you know a
boudet E raise prices on umbrellas when it rained.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
That's all they got.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
There is no payoff for industries to increase artificially inflate
their prices because the people who drive the.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Prices are the consumers.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
That is, if you want to understand supplying demand, it's
the consumers who drive the prices. There is absolutely no
debate on this.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
There is not a.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Single economist who would agree that this is the right
thing to do. We can go and talk about Eastern
Bloc countries. You can look at the chiep terrible cars
that they made, in the appliances they.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Made, but you already know that story.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
So how do you keep a debate alive if we
know this is a fraudulent idea.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
You don't talk to economists.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
You listen to politicians or talking heads like me who
have to do the research, because I'm sick and tired
of hearing people pretend like they know what they're talking
about on TV, but they don't, so you won't see
economists on other shows, other networks. I'm seeing these questions like,
can you give me an example of how this is done?
What are the major industries? What is the right price?
(04:07):
What is too high? What is too low? Can the
government set prices based on not having a knowledge.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Of an industry?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
What do you mean exactly by price gouging? How is
that done? Beyond unique exceptions? Price gouging is a weak
phrase directed at weaker minds.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
David Friedberg is the CEO and founder of the Production Board,
an investment holding company focused on innovations in food, agriculture, biomanufacturing,
and life sciences. He absolutely shredded Kamala Harris's claim of
price gouging.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Give this a listen.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
I unequivocally hate socialism. Socialism destroys innovation, destroys productivity, and
destroys individual liberties. Agriculture and food markets have insanely competitive
dynamics because there are commodity markets, there are tons of competitors.
There is no monopoly in making food. There is no
(05:03):
monopoly making CpG products. There is no monopoly in retail.
There is no monopoly in grocery stores. It is a
small margin, highly competitive, highly fragmented, free market, and the
free market works in that everyone is always competing with
each other, creating new productivity improvements, and as a result,
over time, prices come down, except when the government intervenes
(05:26):
and gets involved. So I would argue that the real
cause of price inflation in food is not the supposed
price gouging by corporate players in the ag and food industry,
all of whom are deeply competitive with one another, but
rather is the result of the inflation associated with government
spending and stimulus coming out of COVID. Nick Exhibit one.
(05:50):
The Fed balance sheet from COVID to today, the Fed
balance sheet grew from four point two trillion to seven
point two trillion dollars, a growth of seventy percent. The
Federal reserve one out and they bought assets, and they
issued debt to banks and introduced liquidity into the system
if you go to the next slide.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
As a result, the M two money supply.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Increased from fifty to trillion to twenty one trillion since COVID,
a forty percent increase.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Okay, so now.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
There is more money in the system, so the cost
of everything should go up, which is exactly what we've seen.
We can walk through a couple of the other commodity
price charts from the Saint Louis fed Here is the
price of electricity as an example. The price of electricity
has gone out a little bit less of the M
to money supply. But the truth is when you start
to actually look at AG commodity prices over time, what's
(06:37):
happened is there was certainly a boost coming from COVID,
but the competition and the challenges in overproduction and the
AG markets has started to hit and started to bring
prices back down.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
So here's the price of strawberry.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
Strawberries today are selling for less than they were pre COVID.
Potatoes are now back to where they were pre COVID.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Now, let me.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Give you some statistics on some of the supposed price
gouging companies in the industry. Craft time Stock pre COVID
was twenty nine bucks a share. Today Kraft tie Stock
is thirty four bucks a share. Twenty nineteen revenue of
twenty five billion, twenty twenty three revenue of twenty six
billion EBITDA on twenty nineteen of six point one billion
EBITDA on twenty twenty three of six point three billion.
(07:17):
There's not a lot of praffit cougy against that. Craft
times has not been able to keep up with the inflation. Starbucks,
which we just talked about, their stock was at ninety
dollars pre COVID and today ninety three bucks. Twenty nineteen
revenue of twenty six billion, operating income of four point
one billion, twenty twenty three revenue of thirty six billion,
but operating income only five point nine.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
Margins have come down in Starbucks nick.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
If you pull up the mackenzy chart, this is a
study of the grocery industry. The State of Grocery in
North America twenty twenty three by McKenzie. Accelerating pressures on profitability.
To cope with the pandemics upheaval, grocers have had to
dramatically increase capex increase supplies. As a result, they've seen
a significant impact on margins. Here's the margin profile pre
(08:01):
pandemic and today. Gross margin has declined by two points
from forty seven point six to forty five point six.
Ebitdam margin has declined by one and a half points.
And now let's just go to the final chart, which
is CpG companies the companies that make food and sell
it to consumers. As you can see during the COVID era,
the three year rolling TSR has declined since COVID across
(08:25):
the board, so food companies are seeing food prices come down,
So farmers they're really suffering. Labor costs have tripled since
the pandemic, but they're still having to sell products at
the same price. CpG companies have lower margins and supermarkets
have lower margins, so there is nowhere in the ag
or food supply chain that we are seeing fundamentally price
gouging or profit taking happening. What has happened is the
(08:47):
cost of labor, the cost of moving stuff around, the
cost of fuel, the cost of electricity, the cost of
goods has all risen with inflation because of the increase
in the money supply and federal spending.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
This is for Michael.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Berrish, CNBC being an NBC product, has not been as
pro business as I would like them to be when
it comes to covering the Biden and now Harris campaigns,
which again makes this surprising. Megan Cassella over there says
(09:19):
that Kamala Harris tells donors one thing behind closed doors,
but then goes out and runs as a progressive. That is,
she tells business owners, investment banks, folks who depend on
a thriving economy that she'll be pro business, solid fundamentals
(09:42):
of economics, and then she goes out and tells the peasants, Hey,
those people I just spoke to over there, they want
to steal all your money. Well, we all know this
is happening, but the fact that CNBC's Megan Cassella is
calling it out.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
This is.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Important.
Speaker 6 (10:05):
She hasn't stuck to any very clear set of ideological policies.
She's wavered a bit throughout her years in politics. What
was interesting to me today in seeing this plan is
that it's clearly very progressive. Regardless of what she's saying
to donors behind closed doors. She is putting a progressive
bent to her campaign at this point, and that's not
what a lot of people expected or hoped to see.
(10:25):
I've been talking to moderate Democrats who said she could
just run a vibes campaign. She didn't have to get
into policy details at all. They think the best way
for her to win is to do anything to just
distance herself from the far left. Regardless of whether or
not she dives into policy details and she would win.
Clearly she didn't take that advice. She is diving into
policy details that go more left. She might be saying
other things behind closed doors to make sure corporations are
(10:47):
still on her side as well, but clearly she wants
to sort of have this brand of the progressive candidate.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Jade Vance was on Fox Business and he had perhaps
the best one liner about Kamala Harris's economic plan.
Speaker 7 (11:02):
The American people just don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris,
who has been Vice president for three and a half years,
is somehow going to tackle the inflation crisis in a
way tomorrow that she hasn't for the past thirteen hundred days.
Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, It's like
giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
The American people are much smarter than that.
Speaker 7 (11:25):
They don't buy the idea that Kamala Harris represents a
fresh start.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
She is more of the same. It is doubling.
Speaker 7 (11:31):
Down on the failed policies of the Harris administration. To
give Kamala Harris a promotion rather than to fire her,
which is what I think most Americans are going to
do on November.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
One of the things I liked about the Republican Convention
was that it reflected America. There were goalstar parents, there
were parents of children who don't want their child transitioned.
There were small business owners, veterans, there were teachers, there
(12:03):
were mothers, fathers, and I really liked that it represented America.
And that's why I'm very happy that President Trump has
been bringing people on the stage who represent the broad,
rich tapestry that is America, regardless what they look like,
(12:27):
people who share our values. Danielle compos is a Venezuelan
born pilot. President Trump brought him on stage in Pennsylvania,
and he spoke from the heart because he saw what
happened to his beloved Venezuela and he shared it.
Speaker 8 (12:46):
First of all, Hi, everybody, thank you for coming here
and supported the presidential I'm gonna say they first buy
off the speech of my story in English. Then I'm
gonna repeat it in Spanish in order to allow our
Latino waters to understand and hear what the situation is
(13:11):
going on. First of all, as the President of Ray said,
I'm from Venezuela. I left the country in two thousand
and seven because of communism.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
I still have family there.
Speaker 8 (13:26):
There's been family that left my there has left even
before me or continuously living little by little. But going
further back, my grandparents from my mom's.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Side were from Cuba.
Speaker 8 (13:39):
They they were at the university when the communist revolution
was going on, and they end up leaving to Venezuela.
They only had the money they received for us their
wedding present, and they were living in a midhouse, going
to school and trying to, you know, move ahead. My
(14:00):
granddad ended up becoming a doctor and had a family, raising.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Three children, my mom and my two uncles.
Speaker 8 (14:08):
In the early nineteen nineties, Chaviz did a military coup
and right after.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
He run for president.
Speaker 8 (14:16):
My granddad saw the similarities to what was happening.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
In Cuba, and he told.
Speaker 8 (14:21):
Everybody that would listen to him that he was coming.
And everybody was like, no, this is Venezuela, this is
not Cuba. This will never happen to us. And guess what,
it happened to us and has been happening to other
Latin American countries as well. So when they tell you
here it will never happen, that's not true.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
We lived it now here we are.
Speaker 8 (14:42):
So in two thousand and seven we end up leaving
because the socialists and the government started changing the education
system to make it more like the Cuban education system,
and myself ring a bell to what's going on here
as well. So it's extremely important for everybody to keep this.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
In breaks my heart to hear these stories breaks my heart.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Flashback to twenty twenty on CNN how Kamala Harris's campaign
unraveled before the Iowa Caucus.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
How Kamala Harris's campaign unraveled. They obtained the resignation letter
of the Harris campaign state operations director, who is now
joining the Bloomberg campaign. She wrote, it is unacceptable that
with less than ninety days until Iowa, we still do
not have a real plan to win. Our campaign for
the people is made up of diverse talent which is
(15:35):
being squandered by indecision and a lack of leaders who lead.
Speaker 10 (15:41):
Molly.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
That is rough stuff.
Speaker 9 (15:43):
You wrote a fantastic a cover story on Kamala Harris
about a month ago or so.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I'm sure based on what you're reporting.
Speaker 9 (15:50):
Has been a lot of this isn't really a surprise
to you.
Speaker 11 (15:53):
No, what's the surprise is that she has failed to
turn it around despite literally months and months and months
of hearing this kind of frustration. And you hear you know,
it's reporters, it's people inside the campaign, it's people outside
the campaign. It's pretty much every voter that you meet
on the campaign trail who goes to see her, and
the common theme is people want to like her, and
(16:14):
then she doesn't close the deal. She's not able to
articulate a consistent and compelling message that makes those voters
who show up for her, who are interested in what
she's selling, that makes them decide, yes, this is the
candidate I can commit to. And the Time story and
a post story today have really laid out this frustration,
especially within her team, that she hasn't been able to
(16:35):
make those decisions.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
And she's been all over the place in terms of
the message. Here's a clip to show some of her
kind of all over the place messaging.
Speaker 12 (16:43):
Truth, justice, decency, equality, freedom. Our mother would sit up
trying to figure out how to make it all work.
That's something most Americans know all too well. And that's
what my three am agenda is all about.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
He's caring your support.
Speaker 13 (17:00):
She will bring us together.
Speaker 14 (17:03):
This is Trump and in every possible way, this is
the anti.
Speaker 9 (17:08):
Trump and now Tolu her one of the messages is
she's the one who can bring back the Obama coalition
in the way that Obama had.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, they've tried out a.
Speaker 15 (17:17):
Number of different messages over the past several months and
just tried to see what is stuck. And it's been
difficult to follow her campaign because there have been so
many different messages. And one of the biggest debates that
she's having internally is whether she wants to be sort
of the progressive left wing California liberal or whether or
not she wants to be more of a moderate, and
both of those lanes are currently clogged up, and the
fact that she's kind of vacillating between the two of
(17:38):
those makes it difficult for any voter to stick to
her when there are so many other options.
Speaker 9 (17:43):
And Julie, this is a policy heavy campaign, I think
in a way that some folks who got in didn't
necessarily predict and maybe weren't ready for. And then she
has hit the.
Speaker 16 (17:52):
Issues with some of her policies right, and some of
this goes back to the candidate herself. I mean, they
have tried out a lot of different messages and a
lot of different strategies. But as Molly said, it is
her lack of ability to stick to one policy prescription,
one set of policy issues that she really wants to
be her trademark that has put our worship.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
Michael Arry Show.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Focus on the border of crime inflation. That's where we win.
When the hearts and minds of people focus. You can't
scattershot fifty eight different things about Kamala just because they bother.
You focus on what matters. Ronaldus Magnus, as Russ used
(18:40):
to like to call him, eloquently and succinctly explained the
cause of inflation.
Speaker 17 (18:48):
Mister Carter became president. Inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running at twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 13 (18:53):
He is blamed the people of living too well. We
don't have.
Speaker 18 (18:56):
Inflation because the people are living too well.
Speaker 13 (18:58):
We have inflation because government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I'm going to play that again because I want you
to learn it and repeat it, because it's powerful.
Speaker 17 (19:09):
Mister cardib became president. Inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running at twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 13 (19:14):
He is blamed the people of living too well.
Speaker 18 (19:17):
We don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation because the government is living too well.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Let me tell you what that inflation did to people.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Because most of us aren't old enough to have been
professional at that time to understand the costs.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
We were just children.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Nineteen eighty November of eighty, when Reagan was elected, the
interest rates were well above ten percent. Because when you
have inflation, the only way with your monetary policy you
can suck the air out of the inflation balloon is
(19:57):
you have to constrict the cash the currency. So your
monetary policy has to be nobody can get a loan.
How do you keep people from getting a loan? You
drive the interest rate up high. That's what you do
to try to battle inflation, to bring the cost down,
to bring sorry, to bring the prices down. The cost
(20:19):
doesn't change, the price has come down, that's the goal.
That's what happened under Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, and Kamala
Harris are just Jimmy Carter three point zero Jimmy Carter,
Barack Obama, Joe Biden. These policies have the same damned
effect every time. But there's a new audience with each
new generation. And when that happened, I was talking to
(20:40):
Charlie Hartland. Charlie is a well he spent most of
his career with inspirity, but before that he was a
home builder, And I said, why did you stop being
a homebuilder And he said, well, under Carter, the interest
rates were so high that nobody could borrow to build
a new to buy a new home.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
So what'd you do?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
He said, Well, first, I had a family to feed,
so I first started by instead of building new homes,
I would renovate the homes that people were in because
they couldn't afford a loan to buy a new house.
And I still had mouths to feed and guys, you know, workers.
So that's what he did until he couldn't any longer.
(21:23):
Then he went to work for what was in administaff
and became inspired and had a great career. But he
was talking about how inflation had hurt him because the
response to inflation is high interest rates, which is why
we have had to have highest rates because of the
inflation that this government has cost. And I'll play it
(21:43):
again because I want you to understand, because Ronald Reagan
is absolutely right.
Speaker 17 (21:48):
When mister Carter became president, inflation was four point eight percent.
It is now running a twelve point seven percent.
Speaker 13 (21:54):
He is blamed the people of living too well.
Speaker 18 (21:57):
We don't have inflation because the people are living too well.
We have inflation because the government is living too well.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
The great Milton Friedman once called inflation the true tax.
Speaker 14 (22:13):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one thing only, how much government is spending, because
that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There is
no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're paying
for it if you're not paying for it through it
in the form.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Of explicit taxes.
Speaker 14 (22:33):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing.
Speaker 10 (22:37):
The thing you should keep your eye on is what
government spends.
Speaker 14 (22:42):
And the real problem is to hold down government spending
as a fraction of our ind And.
Speaker 10 (22:48):
If you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
The problem is politicians want to make promises. They don't
pay for it. You do, but they don't make a
promise to say give me your money that I may
give it.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
To someone else. They appeal to your heart.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's the right thing to do that we spend this
money on this thing. I don't believe the American people
want so many billion dollars to have gone to Ukraine.
And the way this argument is couched is if you
(23:35):
can't afford dinner tonight, just remember Vladimir's Zelensky.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Sure can.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Instead of giving that money to Zelensky and Ukraine, we
could have given it to you. Government shouldn't need to
take your money to give it back to you. Government
shouldn't need to take your money to give it back
to you. Governments should let you keep your money. You
(24:06):
earned it, and when they tell you you're greedy. The
left will tell you you're greedy for not wanting to give
more of your money to other people and let the
politicians get the credit by collecting it first before they
hand it to them. If I wanted to give my
money away, I would give it to charity, and I do,
(24:28):
but I don't need to rout it through the government.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
That's not hoow that works.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
But the government wants the credit for taking your money
and giving it to those people. That's not charitable any longer.
That's not an act of kindness. But in so doing
they harm you by taking that which you've earned and
(24:56):
they harm the person they give it to because they
lose the ability. Like the bear they tell you not
to feed, because they'll they'll lose the ability to forage
on their own the zoo animals. If people don't have
to forage on their own to provide for themselves, they
will grow dependent on a government. And that is exactly
(25:21):
what the Democrats want, and that's where we are.
Speaker 19 (25:24):
Today Michael Berry's show, let's have an economics lesson for
a moment, because it's very important people know they don't
like inflation.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Nobody says, I'm not sure, Michael, I think I might
be in favor of inflation.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Inflation to most people simply means.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
They don't have enough money to buy the things they want.
So in a sense, there is always inflation because we
can never buy as much as we want. Well, that's economics,
the allocation of scarce resources. We all have scarce resources.
(26:16):
We don't have as much money as we'd like. So
we get our first job. We're making fifty thousand dollars
a year. We start that job, we don't have anywhere
to live, we don't have anything to drive, we don't
have clothes to wear to that job.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So what do we do.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
We go borrow money from someone else a bank or
credit card, usually a credit card, and then we're going
to pay them back as we start making money, but.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
We're going to pay them back what we borrowed and
then some.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And this borrowing becomes a crutch because where we do
then we go buy. Then we borrow money for a car,
we borrow money for a house. But that's okay because
we think about how much we're going to pay him
per month and not what we're going to pay them overall.
But it adds up, doesn't it, And we never get
(27:12):
out of that cycle of debt. That's what's happened to
our nation. And so eventually we say, give me more.
I want more money. So the government, without producing more goods,
the government just prints more money. Nobody has spoken more
(27:34):
eloquently in America's history on inflation than Milton Friedman. He
called inflation a disease, and it is. It's a sickness.
It's brought about by the collapse of many nations, or
(27:55):
it's brought about the collapse of many nations in the past.
It is a sickness. You didn't cause it. Only government
can cause it.
Speaker 14 (28:06):
Listen Inflation is a disease. It's a dangerous disease for
a society. It is sometimes a fatal disease for a society.
It's a disease that, if allowed to rage unchecked, can
destroy a society.
Speaker 10 (28:26):
And we have many such examples.
Speaker 14 (28:30):
The classic examples, of course, are the extreme examples of Germany,
of Austria, of Russia after the First World War, when
inflation really did reach levels at which the kind of
apocryphal story I told you was a literal description of
(28:51):
the reality, when inflation reached levels at which employers would
pay their workers three times tis a day after breakfast, lunch,
and dinner so they could go out and spend the
money before.
Speaker 10 (29:04):
It lost all its value. That's the real extreme cases.
Speaker 14 (29:09):
But you don't have to go to such extreme cases
to see the enormous harm which inflation left unchecked can do.
You have the example in many examples in South America.
Brazil before nineteen sixty four was brought down by an
inflation that led to a revolution that toppled the existing
(29:32):
government in order to stem the inflation. In the famous
case of Chile, with mister Elea a Yendi in power,
he produced an inflation which was one of the major
factors that caused the economic catastrophe that led to the
replacement of his government by a military dictatorship.
Speaker 10 (29:54):
We are nowhere near that stage.
Speaker 14 (29:55):
In the United States, but it behooves us as a
nation to pay at ten to this disease, to ask ourselves,
what is the cause of the disease, How do you
cure the disease, What are the effects of the cure,
what are the side effects of it?
Speaker 10 (30:16):
And what will happen if we don't cure it.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Now I want you to understand. You know you've got
this disease, what causes it? Spoiler alert, It's not what
Kamala Harris said price gauging, which she meant price gouging,
but she didn't read the word.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
She has no understanding how this works.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
There is a cancer on this nation that is inflation,
and it's very important that we understand how we got it,
and how you treat it and how you stop it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
So let's go to Milton Friedman again.
Speaker 14 (30:55):
Now, the first step to our understanding the cause of
an is to recognize that it is always in everywhere
a monetary phenomenon.
Speaker 10 (31:08):
It's always in everywhere a result.
Speaker 14 (31:12):
Of too much money of a more rapid increase in
the quantity of money than an output. Moreover, in the
modern era, the important next step is to recognize that
today governments control the quantity of money, so that as
(31:33):
a result, inflation in the United States is made in
Washington and nowhere else.
Speaker 10 (31:40):
Of Course, no government, any more.
Speaker 14 (31:44):
Than any one of us, likes to take responsibility for
bad things.
Speaker 10 (31:48):
Where all of us human.
Speaker 14 (31:49):
If something bad happens, it wasn't our fault, and the
government is the same way, so it doesn't accept responsibility
for inflation.
Speaker 10 (32:00):
Listen to people in Washington talk.
Speaker 14 (32:02):
They will tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen,
or it's produced by grasping unions, or it's produced by
spendthrift consumers, or maybe it's those terrible Arab sheiks who
are producing.
Speaker 10 (32:19):
Now, of course, businessmen are greedy, who of us isn't.
Speaker 14 (32:24):
Trade unions are grasping who of us isn't.
Speaker 10 (32:28):
And there's no doubt.
Speaker 14 (32:29):
That the consumer is a spendthrift at least every man
knows that about his wife. But none of them produce
inflation for the very simple reason that neither the businessman,
nor the trade union, nor the housewife has a printing
press in their basement on which they can turn out
(32:51):
those green pieces of paper we call money. Only Washington
has that printing press, and therefore only Washington can produce inflation.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
And since we're on the subject of the Great Milton Friedman,
let's close with a quote we played earlier. It's important
people understand why we have inflation. Inflation is a tax
on the people by reducing your income to pay for
(33:22):
things government has already spent on it.
Speaker 14 (33:26):
As I said before, keep your eye on one thing,
and one.
Speaker 10 (33:30):
Thing only, how much government is spending.
Speaker 14 (33:32):
Because that's the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There
is no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're
paying for it if you're not paying for.
Speaker 10 (33:43):
It through it in the form of explicit taxes.
Speaker 14 (33:46):
You're paying for it indirectly, in the form of inflation
or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should
keep your eye on is what governments spent.
Speaker 10 (33:55):
And the real problem is to hold down government.
Speaker 14 (33:57):
Spending as a fraction of our And if you do that,
you can stop worrying about the day.
Speaker 17 (34:06):
M
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