RUSH: Did you see what Bill Gates did? Did you see what Bill Gates said? This is one of the craziest, nonsensical things I have ever in my life heard. I understand why he said it. But it is just over-the-top unbelievable. Bill Gates says that capitalism cannot save us from climate change. Bill Gates says that socialism is the only thing that can save us from climate change.
“The worldÂ’s richest man, Bill Gates, has said that the private sector is too selfish and inefficient to produce effective energy alternatives to fossil fuels. While announcing his plan to spend $2 billion of his own wealth on green energy during an interview with The Atlantic, the Microsoft founder called on fellow billionaires to help make the US fossil-free by 2050 with similar philanthropy.”
Bill Gates said: “ThereÂ’s no fortune to be made. Even if you have a new energy source that costs the same as todayÂ’s and emits no CO2, it will be uncertain compared with whatÂ’s tried-and-true and already operating at unbelievable scale and has gotten through all the regulatory problems. Without a substantial carbon tax, thereÂ’s no incentive for innovators or plant buyers to switch.
Since World War II, US-government R&D –” this is just mind-boggling to me. Bill Gates: “Since World War II, US-government R&D has defined the state of the art in almost every area. The private sector is in general inept.”
This is Twilight Zone territory for me. This is surreal. US-government R&D has defined the State of art in almost every area? The private sector is in general inept? He said: “The climate problem has to be solved in the rich countries. China and the US and Europe have to solve CO2 emissions, and when they do, hopefully theyÂ’ll make it cheap enough for everyone else.” China? China and the US and Europe? Europe’s being overrun at the moment and I doubt that they have much on the mind over there other than self-preservation. But nevertheless CO2 admissions are a straw dog anyway. CO2 emissions, greenhouse gas, all of this is made up, phony baloney, good-time rock ‘n’ roller hoax material.
Why is Bill Gates signing on to this? There is an explanation for this. But man, oh, man, he is so signed on that he goes out and makes these patently ridiculous statements. Let me share with you a theory that I have, ladies and gentlemen. It could be wrong. I think every person who has earned or has inherited or who has acquired whatever manner of immense wealth, is scared to death of losing it. The entrepreneur who slaves away and eventually hits the big payday, one of the first thoughts is, “Gosh, I hope somebody doesn’t come along and take this away from me.” And the fear manifests itself in the form of government fear. I hope they don’t come up with a wealth tax. Gee, I hope they don’t start confiscating everybody’s money because they’ve so spent themselves into debt. I mean, these are ongoing, constant fears. Gee, I hope the peasants with pitchforks leave me alone and don’t storm my castle.
I don’t care what it is, these super wealthy people have a fear, or did at one time, of losing it. Not losing it. Not losing it, but having it taken away, having it taken from them. And it is that belief of mine, that theory, which I have come up with to explain why people like Gates and Buffett and a number of these other super billionaires talk like Marxist liberals all the time. It is to keep people away from their money. It is to send the message, “Hey, we don’t threaten you, leave me alone. I’m spending all my money on philanthropy. I’m giving money to AIDS. I’m giving money to Africa. I’m giving money to global warming. I’m giving money to the arts. I’m giving money to support gay marriage and transgenders. Leave me alone.”
It’s about assuaging the fear that somebody’s gonna come for their money. It’s about adopting a public persona that makes their wealth okay. And the peasants with the pitchforks will leave them alone and not come for their money ’cause they’re good people and they care about people. Like Gates is building mosquito nets for malaria. You want to wipe out malaria? Bring back DDT and punt Rachel Carson. But no, no, there needs to be an ongoing problem so I can have ongoing philanthropy, so that I can have ongoing demonstrations of my good works.
How in the world do you reconcile, what could he be thinking of here. Since World War II US-government R&D has defined the state of the art. In almost every area the private sector is in general inept? There’s only one thing that I can think that he might be talking about and that’s nuclear weapons technology. That was R&D, that was government sponsored. It was still private sector people who did it, but it was under the auspices of government. What else is he talking about? Don’t tell me GI Bill and this kind of thing. Don’t give me legislation. What other R&D? Did they invent the cell phone? NASA? Space program? Moon? Okay. All right. But who did it, really? If you ask me, Grumman, Northrop, McDonnell Douglas did it all. It was the government that sponsored it and gave them the money, but where did the work actually take place? Where was all the entrepreneurism? It wasn’t G14 people that put the nuclear bomb together or got us to the moon or built the space shuttle.
You know, if you want to praise the government, go ahead, but to say that the private sector is in general inept. Does Gates think that his $78 billion fortune came from outside the private sector, maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, there’s a companion story to this. “The World’s Most Polluted Places.” Now, Bill Gates says when it comes to climate change and global warming, which of course is a hoax, which is phony. That’s the big thing. Somebody has smart as Gates has to know that this is folderol. Yet he signed on to it, and I submit to you for the same reasons. Get the geek, nerd crew on your side loving you and supporting you, it’s a bunch of Millennial young leftists and then keep the peasants with pitchforks away from you by removing your billions as a threat to them ’cause you’re a good guy.
Gates says when it comes to global warming and that hoax, capitalism is the problem and socialism is the answer. Well, we can test this. We can test this. We have socialist and communist governments all over the world, and we can take a look at how well they’re doing battling pollution, CO2 emissions and climate change.
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RUSH: Okay, now, look, we are actually engaged in a kind of fruitless exercise here because, look, there is no climate change, okay, there isn’t any. I mean, not man-made. There’s no CO2 greenhouse gas. The temperature hasn’t gone up in 18, 20 years. Again, folks, note that the predictions for this are all 50 years from now, 30 years, 75, a hundred years. They’re not predicting next month, next week, next year, because they know nothing’s gonna happen that they can claim responsibility for. They’ve gotta lay these predictions way off when you’re no longer here. They want your tax money now. They want you to agree to big government, global government now, and they’re using fear, but they never predict climate change and its massive impact next week, next year. Another problem today, the ice at the Antarctic mysteriously increasing. That doesn’t fit the computer models.
But anyway, the point is Gates says that capitalism can’t save us from climate change. There isn’t any climate change. It’s almost a nonstarter. It’s an interview he gave in The Atlantic. It’s a very long piece and in it he says the private sector is in general inept. It can’t save us. Capitalism can’t save us from something that isn’t happening may be true, but if you continue to promulgate the hoax, then of course you’re gonna make people believe, well, capitalism can’t save us. No, no. Because, in these people’s view, capitalism caused it. Capitalism is at the root of all evil, including climate change. But where there is socialism, let’s take a look. September 12th, 2007, most recent data. I know it’s eight years ago, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of change here. This is the world’s most polluted places. The top two are in China. The next two are India, then Peru. The next two Russia, then Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Zambia. There isn’t a capitalist economy in any of these places.
Bill Gates says capitalism can’t save us from climate change. Well, we have a bunch of socialist and communist governments and they’re the most polluted places on earth. They are the filthiest, they have more CO2 emissions. These places, according to Gates, ought to be leading the way. But it’s preposterous. The whole thing is preposterous anyway because we have a nonevent that we’re now going to debate what’s better to fix it, socialism or capitalism. So you see, the real game here is to once again diminish and attack capitalism and get everybody, or as many people as you can, aligned against that and use up here this nonexistent hoax of climate change. Since there isn’t any, how can capitalism ever claim to fix it, when it doesn’t exist in the first place, you see? So it’s kind of a setup to begin with. But aside from all that, the things that Bill Gates is quoted as saying in this piece still boggle my mind.
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RUSH: I know I gave you the answer, but it’s still, here’s a guy, perhaps capitalism’s biggest winner, Bill Gates running around flipping it off, flipping it the bird, by talking about how it is in general inept.
At any rate, my friends, I will shelve my disgust.
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RUSH: Here’s something for these — by the way, I’ve got a lot of e-mails. “How can Gates be so dumb? How can a guy be so dumb, here he is, capitalism’s biggest winner.” I don’t think he’s dumb at all. Can’t be dumb. There’s something else going on that explains this. He’s not stupid. Capitalism versus socialism is not hard to understand. And it’s very easy for someone like Gates to realize what happened to him could not happen under socialism. It’d all be taken from him.
There’s something else going on here, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve got a good handle on it. It’s all about keeping the various powers that could take his money away from him away from him. It’s about building a moat around him and his money and creating love and respect and admiration for him so that he gets a stamp of approval. It’s okay if he has a lot of money ’cause he does good things with it, leave him alone. Buffett, same thing I think. I mean, it’s obviously more complicated than that, but I mean that’s the simple explanation here.
But let’s play a little bit here on this whole idea of his that the private sector’s inept in dealing with climate change. Now, even if there is global warming, and I know there isn’t, but I want to play the hypothetical game. Even if there is global warming, and if you fervently believe that, and given what I just shared with you about the filthiest places on this planet and every damned one of them is either run by a dictatorship or communism or socialism — we have two cities in China, one city in India, one in Peru, two in Russia, one in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Zambia. We’re not dealing with capitalist countries here, which are the filthiest, the most polluted places on earth. So the idea that socialism and big government is where all the research and development is and big government’s where all the good ideas are? It’s caca, okay?
So even if there is global warming, and again I assure you there isn’t, wouldn’t the best solution be to bring back as much manufacturing as possible to the US? After all, we are the most advanced at cleaning up our messes. And that, by the way, is another of the many gold stars that attach to capitalism. Capitalism, capitalist countries are better at cleaning up their messes than any other type or form of government out there, for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. We are the most advanced at protecting the environment. And some of you might think, “Yeah, yeah, that wouldn’t be the case, Rush, if it wasn’t for government and all these regulations ’cause you know these companies, Rush, you know they kill everything. They’d kill every customer they got. They’d poison every river and they’d do everything they could to destroy.”
Right. That’s exactly what capitalist companies want to do is kill their customers. I can think of no better business plan. I’d like to go to Harvard Business School and go for my doctrine on the thesis that American business corporations are striving to kill their customers. I bet you I’d get an A from Harvard. I mean, how nonsensical is this? How many people, “Hey, Rush, look these drug companies, Rush, these drug companies, you see how much their prices have gone up? They’re just they’re just gouging people.” You know why they’re prices have gone up in drugs?
Obamacare! Can somebody say Obamacare? Even the CBO, back in 2010 the original scoring warned everybody if you do this pharmaceutical prices are going to skyrocket, and they have, and they are. And yet every liberal Democrat running around out there complaining, whining, moaning about the drug companies gouging people, they’re just following the regulations and the law as written under Obamacare. Yes, I’ve got backup for this. Look, you have to trust some of this stuff. I’ve got it right here if you want, but it’s gonna delay getting to other things. I’m not making this up. No point in making this stuff up.
If this could be easily refuted, why would I make it up? Obamacare is why health care has gone up. Obamacare’s why health insurance has gone up. The new enrollment period is starting now, and it’s an absolute disaster. Coming up later here in the Stack. Government doesn’t solve anything. Government makes messes and then sets itself up as the fixer, and in the process makes the mess even bigger.
Anyway, back to my original point. If there’s global warming, wouldn’t it make sense to bring back as much manufacturing to the US as possible? We’re the most advanced at protecting the environment. It’s capitalism that allows us to have such high pollution standards, meaning, capitalism is what permits — actually, capitalism requires that these messes be cleaned up in order to stay in business and prosper and grow.
There’s no refuting this, either. You can go to any communist paradise you want, measure the pollution against that here in the United States, it’s not even close, per capita or however you want to imagine it. I have always maintained the problem in the world is the unequal distribution of capitalism. I just think it’s nonsensical to watch all this stuff, and it just gives you an idea of some of the powerful forces that we are all up against, when someone like Gates comes around and starts bashing capitalism, I mean, that’s made to order for every college student out there to just soak up, believe, and then start reciting.
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RUSH: Here’s Jeff in Wilmington, North Carolina. Great to have you, sir. Appreciate your patience. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Good. Good. Thank you.
CALLER: I wanted to add on to your point with Bill Gates and the wealthy being fearful of losing their money, and that’s where socialism comes in. Socialism basically creates a situation where it impedes people’s ability to acquire capital in order to compete with them. If no one has the ability to compete with them, they’re gonna be pretty well situated up at the top where they are and they don’t have to worry about it.
RUSH: Well, you know how that’s true? I’ll tell you how that really works is if the rich people you’re talking about, rather than wishing everybody can experience it, are the kind that say, “I’ve got money, now let’s shut it down,” which essentially is what you’re saying. You got people who would rather not be competed with or against and high tax rates — I’ve always maintained that the income tax is the number one obstacle to the creation of wealth in the country, because it is a tax on your work. And the more you work, the harder you work and the more you earn, the more you pay.
It’s almost a punitive kind of thing which is why I’ve always objected to punishing achievement, which is what the tax code does. But there’s no question here that Jeff is exactly right about this. The income tax particularly is one of the greatest deterrents to the acquisition of wealth that there is. You don’t know any billionaires that have gotten that money by being paid that money. They don’t work for anybody. That’s the point.
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RUSH: Let me bounce off the income tax statement I just made. The income tax, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest obstacles to the acquiring of wealth, the amassing of wealth, that we have. The phrase robber barons, does it ring a bell? Mr. Snerdley? And this is not to determine who knows or doesn’t know, just a series of pop quiz questions leading to something. Who were they? Who were the robber barons? (interruption) Okay. Very good. Okay, that’s right. The industrial titans of the late 1800s and the 1920s and thirties were the robber barons, people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, Joseph Kennedy — well, but he may actually have been one. (laughing) And of course John Pierpont Morgan. JPMorgan, he wasn’t an industrialist. JPMorgan, at one time, had more money than the United States Treasury.
Yes, at one point the United States Treasury actually borrowed money from John Pierpont Morgan. One of the best — if you want to read a quick, relatively quick, one of the greatest stories about JPMorgan without having to read a book, is a cover story on the guy done by Cigar Aficionado about ten years ago I think. It’s one of the greatest pieces on John Pierpont Morgan ever. The man loved debt. Everybody was indebted to him. He lent money like crazy. He wasn’t worried about people not paying it back, because the vast majority of people always do. And if they don’t, you got goons to go get what they owe you. But he amassed so much money, at one point the federal government had to borrow some from him. Now, this is back in the 1800s.
Now, the robber barons traditionally are taught about as a bunch of mean, selfish rich people who, when you ask people how did the robber barons get their money, they’re regarded as thieves. (interruption) Yes, they are, robber barons? What do you mean they’re not regarded as thieves? Robber baron. So who did they steal their money from? The whole mode of thinking is alive and well today. The Democrat Party wants you to believe that everybody that has wealth today sole it from today’s middle class, or yesterday’s middle class. And the math has never worked out for me. The idea that the poor used to be rich but the rich stole the money from ’em? I bet the poor don’t even remember the days they were rich. But the math just doesn’t work out. But it sells.
One of the lead items on Drudge right now, there’s some guy who took his video camera out to the beach in California, one of these man on the street things, like Jay Leno used to do. I mean, any number of people do ’em. And they started talking to Hillary Clinton supporters and telling them all that Hillary Clinton was an avid supporter of Sharia law, and they all said, “Oh, that’s great, so am I, love Sharia law.” It’s clear they don’t even know what it is. So it’s just another way of illustrating how ignorant so many people are. But the whole term robber baron is designed to denigrate that group of people. But look at what they did.
Why is there Rockefeller Center, for example? You know what Rockefeller Center is and what it consists of? It’s massive. And it was all built by John D. Rockefeller. He had so damn much money, he couldn’t possibly have spent it on himself, so he built this massive thing for New York City, not to mention the parks, not to mention museums, many of which still stand today. All of these old robber barons built much more than government has.
They were the biggest philanthropists in the world, but they had enough left over to also be the most conspicuous of spenders. The Vanderbilts, the railroad people. (interruption) I know. John D. Rockefeller gave to poor people, in addition to everything else. But you look at the Vanderbilts, the Breakers, the mansion in Newport, Rhode Island they built that for basically four weeks a year, and they would go in the summertime when the city got too hot, go up to Rhode Island, and it took railroad cars to transport all the silver, all the plates, all the drinking glasses, and all that just for four weeks, and the railroad cars took it back to wherever it went. I mean, this was pre-income tax and they just had amassed incredible amounts of wealth, and there have always been people around that think like Democrats do, thought it was unfair and unjust, and so there were all kinds of policies put into play to begin the process of taking that money away from ’em.
Then what happened, they all opened, started foundations. The Fords. The Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Mellons, foundation after foundation, and slowly and surely the left took over all of them. And all of these people, if there was a politics of the day, they would have all been vastly more conservative, especially the way they lived their lives, than liberal. But the left saw these foundations, and they just gradually, as the founders died and as the progeny became worthless, which always happens. At some point in the third or fourth generation, just a bunch of worthless duds and left to their own devices they’ll lose everything. By that time, the left moves in and takes over the foundations, and that’s how liberalism spreads its tentacles and encroaches.
But who did they steal from? (interruption) They didn’t steal anything. They discovered oil, any number of — the railroads. They were all said to be people that exploited people and used them and were mean, and their achievements are always impugned and glossed over. And now we’ve reached the point where people like Barack Obama, who couldn’t do one-tenth of 1% what any of the truly great in this country have done, they are considered to be such because they found a way to get their hands on the United States Treasury and treat the money as their own.
Take a look at Obamacare. It has never enjoyed the support of anywhere near a majority of people. It can honestly be said that Obamacare has never been supported by even a narrow majority of the people of this country.