 Hi, I'm James. And I'm Anthony. And this is Words and Numbers. So today we take up the idea of alternate facts. In the last week or so, we've had the President of the United States come out and say that the murder rate is at an all-time high. Yeah. If anybody in the country should have a good grasp of what the murder rate actually is, you think it would be this guy? Well, he does have access to federally collected numbers which keep track of this sort of thing. And the number he quoted was... Oh, he didn't quote a number, but he said it's the highest that it's been in 45 years. And that is... What was that word my mother used to use? Nonsense. That's nonsense. Well, yeah, it's not that he's off by a little bit. He picked a number that has been falling steadily for decades. And he turns around and says it's at the highest it's ever been. The murder rate's been falling, I believe, since the late 1960s. So, give you some numbers. The murder rate today in the U.S. is 4.9 per 100,000 people every year. Back 45 years ago, it was almost twice that. It's 7.9. And 30 years ago, it was 10.2, right? So, this is like the lowest it's been in the history of the country, possibly in the history of the human race. Yeah, I know. So, I mean, we can make the case, I think, pretty easily that these numbers are all too high and that we would far prefer if they were, you know, zero. Right. And you would expect, you know, perhaps, some hyperbole like this coming from someone who was, you know, pro-gun control because this is the entree to confiscating everybody's weapons. But this guy, as far as I know, is not a gun control advocate. Where he's coming up with, how it occurs to him to say something like this is beyond my comprehension. And the simple fact of the matter is that the lies, the alternative facts, sell better than the truth. Further, the truth is actually pretty hard to ascertain. You've got to do a little bit of work in order to get your alternative facts out there. All you have to do is sit down and spew them out. And one side lines up between one set of alternative facts, the other side lines up behind the other. And before you know it, we're developing policy based on nonsense. And that's precisely what happens in the United States year after year after. Right. I think ultimately he's got a tremendous propensity just to make stuff up. And this is just another example of that. But, you know, let's be honest, Ant. Let's play fair. He's not the only one because everybody will have you believe that over time the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Right, right. This is the important thing, right? So step away from dollars for a moment and look at what people are consuming. And so when you start to look at what people are actually consuming, what you find is that the average poor person in the United States today lives a better life than the average rich person did 200 years ago. Or that the average king did 200 years ago. Right. Even globally, poverty is on the decline, right? You see these studies that come out that show that income disparities are so profound that, you know, the very fairness of human life is implicated all the way through. Right, right. But when it comes right down to it, everybody right now globally over the last 20 years has had a tremendous leap forward. So when our parents were our age, the global poverty rate was something like 50%, 40%, right? 40% of human beings on the planet lived in what the United Nations classifies as extreme poverty. Today that number is 10%. And it's 10% despite the fact that there are billions more people on the planet than there were 30, 40 years ago. The unfortunate thing here is when you say something like the poor getting poor it is so blatantly false that everything you say thereafter we're just going to ignore and there's some really good stuff. We should be concerned absolutely positively with the poor. But we can't deal with that in any rational basis as long as we go with these nonsense statements floating around. So maybe it's time that we all took a look at the actual facts and started talking about what really is instead of what we would prefer to beat our political opponents over that. Yeah, and I think this is an important thing because again it's not to say that poverty is not a problem. Absolutely it is. But it is to say if you want to solve it as opposed to just making a buck off it. If you want to solve it you've got to understand not only what it is but what it is that contributes to alleviating it and you get nowhere as long as you're quoting these nonsense figures again. Right, and that's everybody from presidents to peasants. We all need to do a much better job. So until next week I'm James and that's Anthony. And if you would like to learn more be sure to take a look at the comments and click on through and take a look at what fee.org has to offer online. Talk to you next week James. Take it easy.