RUSH: Now, look. I don’t want anybody out there getting upset thinking that I or anybody calling the program here today is denigrating people who want to work. But, folks, there is this sad reality here that there are a number of Americans who are, quote-unquote, “earning” more on welfare, unemployment, whatever you want to call it, than they were working.
And some of them are making the decision that they would rather do that than go back to work and earn less. Now in one way (chuckles), it makes common sense. If you’re gonna pay somebody $60,000 a year to not work and their job pays them 40 or 50, what do you think they’re gonna do? We don’t know how many that is. But what we do know is that that disincentive to work has to be fixed.
The federal government simply cannot be responsible for providing incentives for people not to go back to work in this circumstance, when we need the economy rebounding and fast. That is what the Democrat Party stands for. That’s what Joe Biden wants to do. Biden, Pelosi, all these Democrats — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whoever you think — Crazy Bernie.
Whoever the leaders of the Democrat Party are, that’s what they believe in: Paying people not to work. It’s even worse. Listen to me. Do not doubt me on this. What the Democrat Party, what Pelosi specifically is attempting to do… Folks, this is really hideous. With their proposal of a $3 trillion extension COVID-19 support package, what they are trying to do is convince as many voters as possible that socialism works, that you never have to work again, that your government can give you plenty enough money where you can have a decent life.
They can give you $60,000 a year without you ever having to work. That is one of the lying premises of socialism, that everybody can be rich, that everybody can be comfortable, and that everybody can be the same, that nobody will have more than anybody else, that it can be a quasi-utopia. Well, that can’t be done in perpetuity, and the Democrats know it, and they wouldn’t do it in perpetuity.
Once November 3rd comes, all this is out the window. Well, maybe not immediately, ’cause they’re gonna have to continue the ruse for a while. If they lose, it’s all out the window. I guaran-damn-tee you if they lose November 3rd, which they’re going to, it’s gonna be all out the window. But they are trying… This is one of the most disingenuous, misleading, cruel things that I think they have ever tried.
And that is the attempt to convince as many voters that the government can provide everybody $60,000 a year for not working. And what they want to try to do is they’re gonna try to say is, “We’ve always been able to do this! It’s just the Republicans standing in the way. It’s the Republicans, who wanted you to suffer, wanted you to not work, wanted you to be punished for not working. We could have been doing this all this!”
That’s what they’re gonna try to convince people. It is hideous, ’cause it’s not possible, folks. But to a bunch of people that have been ill-educated all their lives and do not know the truth of Marxism, socialism, communism? People in their twenties and thirties who believe that socialism is utopia, it’s a panacea, and the Democrats are gonna finally make it happen?
Nobody can make it happen. If it works, why isn’t this in practice anywhere else in the world where there is socialism? Why, if it works, dos every socialist country feature a population that wants out? Why do they all want to come here? In Cuba, in China they have policies to keep people in. Same thing in other socialist countries. Venezuela. So I beg of you not to fall for it.
Now, along the same lines, I don’t want to, at the same time, convey that I have lost faith in the American people. I haven’t — and especially today, I’m taking great pleasure in the things that we’ve heard on the phones from people who’ve called. I know it’s a caller here and a caller there, and it’s impossible to extrapolate it into representing millions, but we hope it does.
But I think one thing that we’re learning and seeing in the midst of this coronavirus panicdemic is how innovative Americans and American businesses are. They’re innovative in adapting brilliantly as best they can. Restaurants, for example. When governments came along and said, “You can’t open up! You can’t serve food inside, because we’ve got an everybody-has-to-wear-a-mask policy, and we can’t socially distance. You can’t serve.”
I will guarantee you that even when hotel room service has been shut down — and it has been — there are outfits — I’m sure you know them — that you can call. They’re delivery services, and it’s participating restaurants. And you go to the restaurant where you want to order food, you pick out what you want. But you don’t call the restaurant; you call delivery service.
The delivery service says, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll take care of it,” and they bring it to you, wherever you are. It’s been amazing to watch this. Even when the hotels have shut down their room service and whatever else they’ve shut down — because there aren’t that many people staying in the hotels, so they’ve had to cut back — then there have been ways to make up for the loss.
You don’t have to sit there and starve in a hotel because there’s no room service, even in cities that are shut down. It’s one of these things that is forever going to change. Now, okay. So you check into a hotel with no room service because they’ve had to cut back. So people are picking up the slack. So now when things do go to bed normal — and they will at some point.
There’s either gonna be a vaccine, there’s either gonna be therapeutic medicines or there’s gonna be herd immunity. We’re gonna get back to normal. Even if it’s a two-year period of time, we’re gonna get back to normal. But when we do, a lot of things are gonna be different. Will companies still find it necessary to pay exorbitant rents to have offices in very large, expensive cities when the employees have demonstrated they don’t have to go to those offices to do the work?
Will hotel room service ever come back when you can get a bigger menu and more of what you want with a delivery service? Or will hotels refuse to permit delivery services to deliver in the hotels so that you have to do their room service? Any number of things are gonna happen here, because the innovation and adaptation that is occurring now is going to have long-lasting impact and change that not all of us can see right now because we’re tied up in day-to-day living, day-to-day existence.
But, man, so many ways of doing things are going to be either not necessary anymore or better ways are going to be found to accomplish the same thing. What makes it interesting is the innovation and the adaptability of that portion of the American population that works. This is not meant to denigrate those of you who don’t. Do you remember over the years I’ve always told you the Democrat targeted tax increases on the rich never work?
The reason they don’t work is because the rich don’t just sit there and make targets of themselves. The best example I can give you of this is when the Democrats raised taxes on luxury yachts and boats. They thought, “All right, we’re gonna screw the rich. We’re gonna soak the rich, gonna raise taxes on their yachts.” You know what happened? The rich stopped buying yachts made in America. They started buying yachts made overseas.
You know who suffered?
I’ll give you another example. You may not remember this. In 1993 Bill Clinton decided that he was gonna have a tax increase on corporate CEO salaries. Yeah. Any corporation that paid its CEO over a million dollars would be taxed at a new tax rate over a million dollars. Well, that was gonna make it really hard for corporations to find the best CEO they could find.
So you know what they did? They created stock options. They created a way to compensate CEOs outside of the traditional earned income. So they found a way to not pay that tax. In fact, I think it was done on purpose to create the stock option angle.
And this happens all the time. Capital gains taxes, they’ll raise taxes on capital gains, people find a way around it. The ingenuity, the adaptability and the innovative characteristics of the American people is unparalleled anywhere in the world. And you know why? Freedom, folks. The American people have the freedom and liberty to be as creative as they know how to be.
And, by the way, we’re not all created with the same talents and abilities. Some people are far more creative than others, in certain things. Others are more creative in other things than others. It all works. It all evens out. But it is the freedom that Americans have, it’s the liberty that Americans have that permit this kind of innovation, adaptability.
People around the world probably have the same talents. I know they do. They just don’t have the liberty or freedom where they live to put ’em into action, put ’em into play.
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