RUSH: And we have Derek from Houston back with us. We ran out of time with him yesterday, didn’t actually get to take his call. He’s 20 years old, and he wants to talk about the coming explosion of robotics and automation that people his age are obviously concerned about. Welcome to the program, Derek, and thanks for letting us call you back.

CALLER: Absolutely. Thank you for calling me back. How are you today?

RUSH: Good, good, good. So what is it that you want to talk about specifically?

CALLER: So, like I said yesterday, I want to say first off thank you for doing this. I know it’s your career, but, you know, you kind of built a foundation for my conservative-libertarian ideals. Um, and it’s kind of been… It’s a journey that I’m very independent intellectually. But my question is — and I’ve tried to find a lot of different places, a lot of different commentators — Republican, Democrat, whoever — and they just haven’t heard any answer to this question. With the… Especially with my generation, we’re very nervous about the coming explosion in the automation and robotics industry.

And the Democrats, the left have this idea of a universal basic income, you know, with Facebook supporting it. All these people saying, “Oh, it’ll be great. We’ll just have this utopia practically.” I don’t trust the government as far as I can throw it, and that’s just not even an option to me as a solution. But what is the right solution to this problem? Because I do see… Uh, it’s not… It’s possible it won’t happen, but especially with the low-income, low-education, low-skill set jobs. Um, for instance truckers? Somewhere in the high nineties percent are low-IQ males.

RUSH: Well, the first thing to remember — notwithstanding current circumstances which are unique. I mean, look, since Genesis there’s nothing really new. But that doesn’t matter because in terms of your life span, there are things happening that haven’t happened to you before, so they’re new and therefore challenging and real. But here in the bigger subset, I think we’re talking attitude. And I’m gonna ask to you hold on during the break ’cause I’m not gonna be able to get all this said before it, but here’s the thing:

One thing to take comfort in is that during the life span of the country, what is happening here with the advent of robotics and automation has happened before. The buggy whip industry was destroyed by the automobile. So the people that furnished horses and built buggies and buggy whips went out of business. What did they do? They had to adapt, and human beings… The successful human being is adaptable. We have to adapt to changes in weather. We have to adapt to changes in climate. We have to adapt to changing economic circumstances.

People that don’t have the flexibility to adapt or who are afraid of change or who oppose it are going to be left behind. The opportunities, just as when the horse and biggie industry went south — and there are many other industries that have gone south as the result of innovation and invention of things. Air-conditioning! Look at how air-conditioning changed things. It just… A lot of people were rendered useless, but look at how it improved and advanced productivity.

The thing about robotics and automation, the way the left is dealing with this is to talk about basic guaranteed income? They’re basically throwing up their hands and saying, “You know what? We don’t even want to try to create replacement jobs because we don’t think anybody’s gonna be competent. We’d just as soon give ’em an income and forget about it and convert them to voters,” and you’re exactly right, that’s unacceptable. Now, hang on. We’ll be back and continue in a moment.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now back to Derek in Houston. Derek, I need to ask you. Did you say that truck drivers are low IQ guys, low IQ males?

CALLER: Not all of them, but there’s a higher percentage in that profession according to a couple studies I’ve read.

RUSH: According to a couple studies that you’ve —

CALLER: I don’t remember where they were.

RUSH: The phone lines are melting here with truck drivers, and I thought, why? And I went back to the transcript of what you —

CALLER: Yeah, sorry.

RUSH: That’s okay. We’ll get back to that later. Truck drivers, he wasn’t insulting, he’s thinking about job opportunities in the future and — here’s the thing about — you mentioned the guaranteed or whatever they’re calling it, guaranteed income. That is a cop-out.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: It’s rooted in — Zuckerberg and these guys promoting it are thinking, because they don’t really have faith in people, that people aren’t gonna be able to adapt once there’s robotics and automation that’s widespread. They’re leftists, Derek, and they don’t have a lot of faith in people to be able to take care of themselves, and so a guaranteed national income is designed to deal with their consciences and their guilt ’cause these are the people responsible for the innovation of robotics and automation. And so if they can funnel you enough money to live every year and not worry about you, that’s fine. I think it sells all of you short, because these opportunities, the innovation is gonna create even more opportunity because somebody is gonna have to program these robots.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Somebody is gonna have to fix them and maintain ’em. There’s gonna be all kinds of related work with the robots.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: The robots are not gonna have brains. Somebody’s gonna have to program the intelligence into them. What is your level of interest right now? Do you know yet what you want to do?

CALLER: So I’m actually a real estate investor in Houston. I went to A&M for two years in a business school, kind of had the same type of situation.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: It was very slow in the classes, you had to show up, and it didn’t fit exactly what I was looking to do. But I’m investing in real estate in Houston, so I’m not particularly worried about myself.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I’m more worried as a general idea, ’cause I’m kind of an ideas guy.

RUSH: Yeah, I like that you said you’re intellectually independent. You don’t find that in Millennials much these days, and I like that. Well, I don’t have, sitting here today, specific jobs or categories that I think are going to be created as the result of this innovation. All I know is history, and —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — with every innovation that has happened, we somehow, our country, our society has found jobs and a means of income for people who have been aced out. And it happens a lot with innovation, technological and otherwise. And people do prove adaptive. The biggest problem we’ve got with it, I’m telling you right now, the biggest problem we’ve got is people like Zuckerberg and the left who want to wash their hands of it and just give people an income and be rid of the problem.

That’s not a solution. That’s destructive. It’s not helpful to the people that are gonna be guaranteed this income. It’s a disaster in the making because it’s never gonna be enough and it doesn’t train people, it doesn’t educate people, and it doesn’t help them learn to become adaptive, which is gonna be required.

I would urge you, since you’re fairly confident in your circumstances, situation, and I understand your concern for your peers, and I would just tell ’em to be open-minded and don’t get all negative and pessimistic. And by all means, don’t think that Mark Zuckerberg is the final word in anything, whatever. I mean, Zuckerberg’s out there, he’s in the news today for other reasons. This guy apparently is running for president and he has hired Hillary Clinton’s campaign adviser and pollster, Joel Benenson to work for him in this effort Zuckererg has to introduce himself to the American people.

You know what he’s been doing? He’s been flying around in little communities, and he goes to place like Oshkosh and Leavenworth, and he doesn’t tell anybody in advance that he’s there. And he’ll show up on your doorstep and ask to come in and talk to you just get to know you and have you get to know him. And people are saying, “What in the hell? What’s he doing?”

And the educated guess is that he is preparing a run for the presidency. A lot of people are. Kid Rock is gonna run for the Senate from Michigan. Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, is gonna run for president, maybe. The Rock is seriously thinking running because of Trump. These clowns are thinking, if Trump can do it, then I can do it.

It’s kind of like after this show everybody thought they could do radio. Now everybody thinks they can be a politician. Everybody thinks they can be president. So Kid Rock is gonna run for Senate in Michigan. The Rock is thinking about running for president. Well, Kid Rock does, and he’s one of us, and on polling he’s amazingly close to Debbie Stabenow.

But back to Derek. Derek, you tell everybody in your peer group that’s worried about this not to be worried. In every innovative period in America, the word is “opportunity.” Human beings are just natural. It’s easy to be pessimistic. Nobody needs to be taught how. You don’t need to buy a book on it. You don’t need to go to classes to learn how to be pessimistic. But you do read books on how to think positively, and people who write them become very rich because it takes effort.

You tell people in your peer group — I’ll tell ’em, too — be adaptable and wide open because there are going to be opportunities created even though certain areas, certain types of work, may be erased. Look, Democrats are largely responsible for this with this idiotic push on raising the minimum wage. They are just accelerating the rollout of robots.

McDonald’s is hiring 3200 robots to handle the drive-through windows, all because the minimum wage that’s being forced on small businesses is going up. They’re saying, “To hell with it! I can’t stay in business with this.” The Democrats are talking it up just to get votes, but it’s doing great damage, and it’s accelerating all this. Okay. So what’s being lost here? “Hamburger-flipper jobs.” What kind of jobs have the Democrats been excoriating all of your life? Hamburger-flipper jobs! The Democrats themselves have been saying they’re worthless.

They mock them, they make fun of them, what have you. They joke about people that do them. Okay, so we’re getting rid of ’em. Robots are gonna take over! So nobody’s gonna have to do that kind of work. That ought to be looked at as a positive and a state of advancement. Nobody wanted to do it anyway, right? Entry-level work, right? We don’t need that! But every technological innovation requires new kinds of work accompanying it. I saw the other day that Apple is in a mad dash to hire engineers who are experts in mapping, who have expertise in mapping.

Apple is serious about improving their maps app and autonomous driving, which means you have to be proficient in mapping. And they’re going to town on it. And I don’t think it’s to become better than Google Maps. I don’t think that’s their idea. It might end up being a natural competition. I think they’ve got some other idea altogether. I think Apple — with augmented reality and autonomous driving such for automobiles or whatever — is hiring up do this.

They’re not letting people off to get this done; they’re hiring people. Which, if you look, is going to be happening at all of these places that are innovating. You need people — engineers, whatever — to administer, to program, to repair all of these things. We know how often tech fails. We know how often there are glitches, because it involves software. So it’s gonna be an ever-changing workforce, much like we’ve had an ever-changing workforce since the beginning of the country.

I mean, there are other examples I could give besides, you know, what the automobile did in terms of people that it put out of business. But, you know, you talk about over-the-road truckers. They are busier than ever right now because there’s so much economic activity, so much cargo that needs to be shipped. Nobody’s talking about automated drivers of trucks yet. In fact, this automated-driving business? In reality, that’s so far down the road. You know, the Ubers and the Teslas want you to think that it’s right around the corner.

These are the same people that tell you we gotta colonize Mars in the next 50 years if we’re to survive as a human race. It’s absolute stupidity. All it does is scare people — particularly young, impressionable minds who already think there isn’t gonna be a planet in 30 years. Now they’re thinking, since there isn’t gonna be a planet, “If we don’t get to Mars in 30 years (sobbing), I’m gonna die.”

But we’re not gonna have fully autonomous driving vehicles that insurers will ensure (chuckles) — which is a big deal — for many, many years, folks. It is not right around the corner. What does that mean? It means that they’re gonna be hiring people left and right trying to get there. So the tech sector is always gonna be growing and burgeoning. Jobs that are lost because of it will be replaced. It just… We’re an adaptive people, and if we could get a handle on our education system — which would change a basically pessimistic attitude to one of optimism — we would be that much better off.