 questions and he's been like almost jumping out of a seat the whole time. I'll give him a first shot. Okay, thank you for outlining your dystopia that you've done for the last hour. But it seems to me that your moral argument is entirely consequentialist, that if we allow people to pursue their self-interest, somehow everyone will be better off. No, I don't care about everybody. I mean, let me be very clear. My argument's not consequentialist. My argument is if I pursue my self-interest, I'm going to be better off. I think if you do it right, you'll be better off. But you might, you know, you might not do it right. You might suffer. And some people choose not to be self-interested, not to do it right, and they'll be worse off. If we just look at history, when the capitalist has pursued his self-interest, and there hasn't been a minimum threshold, we're saying to someone, you're not worth a certain amount of money. You'll work $2 an hour. But if we don't pay you enough, we don't care about how you survive or, you know, the sort of thing. So the whole point of the minimum wage is not just about restricting neighbor supplies you seem to think it is. It's about assigning it to someone. You know, you're not worth nothing to the capitalist, as most capitalists would see their work force as expendable individually. You can just get rid of them higher when and as and as how they please. And also on this, you know, on the tax system, you know, you seem to think that the more Steve Jobs accumulates his personal wealth, the more somehow he is benefiting society. However, there comes a point where the wealth you're accumulating is no longer productive wealth. Surely you would agree with that. No, that's ridiculous. No, it's not ridiculous. It's anti-economic. Steve Jobs, going from $60 billion to $70 billion, it's not, it's just purely, you know, that 10 extra, 10 extra, that extra 10 billion dollars is purely for his self-gain. It's not going to expand anything else. Okay, so we just use that productive wealth. I get that. So we use that productive wealth to reinvest in tea curry to help people because we're human beings. We don't do that. We don't do that. So let me address this. You've brought up two issues. Let me address those two issues and we can bring up other issues after. Right? Two issues, one. Let me start with Steve Jobs because I remember it. I mean, there are two issues here. One, how does he make the extra billion dollars? By helping you guys. By selling you a product that you want more than what is charging you for it. So you're better off and he's better off. So that's productive. He's made the world a better place and he's gotten another 10 billion dollars. Now, what does he do with that extra 10 billion dollars? Right, he's 50 billion dollars. That he uses productively to invest since he does this. But the extra 10 billion he puts is in mattress. No, what does he do with it? What does he do with it? He buys a yacht. Oh, okay. He buys a yacht. Somebody built a yacht? He puts it in the bank. He puts it in the bank. What does the bank do with it? Lend it to people. Yeah. I mean, the bank lends it to people. You know, Steve Jobs doesn't put it in a checking account. So it's not a fraction of a zoo because he doesn't need a checking account because of the 10 billion dollars. It's in a saving account, which is lent out, not a fraction of a zoo, but is an legitimate lending right? So it's being used productively. No matter what he does with it, if he consumes it, it's going to pay for the people who made the stuff that he's consuming. But even better, if he invests it, it's going to create massive economic activity. The worst thing he can do with it from a purely economic perspective, from the perspective of people's well-being, the worst thing he can do it is give it away. But if you put it in the Swiss bank account, it's not being used productively. What does Swiss banks do with the money? I mean, this is amazing to me. What does Swiss banks do with their money? Why are we complaining about the banking industry today? I don't know, but let's... Why are they not lending? If you ever talk to a bank and ask them why you're not lending, do you know why they're not lending today? Because bankers agree to say they don't want to make money. How do banks make money? They make money by giving you 2% and lending the money out to 6%, 8%, 10%. They make money. So bankers want to lend money. So why are they not lending money right now? There are two reasons. Because what? No one trusts them. I don't care. I don't have to trust you to borrow money from you. You have to trust me. The fact that people don't trust banks don't prevent me from going to ask you for money. I owe you. Usually you need to trust me. Why do people... Why are banks not lending money? There are only two reasons. One, regulators won't lend them. And you just talk to bankers. Regulators won't lend them because regulators are concerned about safety and the more banks lend, the higher the risk. And regulators don't want that. If you talk to bankers in America, I do a lot of that. I invest in banks. And bankers are being told by regulators don't lend them. That's reason one and one. What's the second reason? People don't want to borrow. Why don't people want to borrow? Because the economy sucks. So I don't want to expand my business. I want to go out there and do a bunch of stuff because there's too much. By the way, I created it completely by government. Now where are bankers putting their money? At least in the U.S. They're putting it at the Federal Reserve. Now why are they doing that? Because that's kind of interesting. Because the Federal Reserve is paying them interest on their money. They never used to. So the United States banking system has close to two trillion dollars of bank money sitting under reserves at the Fed getting a small interest on that money. It used to be zero. So you just have no incentive to put it. Because the Fed doesn't want you to lend money. They will need to give you an interest not to lend money. Bankers want to lend. It's how they make money. In a free market, a market not controlled by regulated rate, there's tons of lending going on. No money sits in the bank. Because when it sits in the bank, the banker can't make any money off of it. Think greed. To understand business, you always need to think what's in it for him. That's why I love business. Because I understand selfishness. You want to sell me something. I understand exactly what your motivation is. You want to get the highest price possible. And you want to sell me this good. And I want to get the lowest price possible. And I want to get that good. And we can negotiate now. We understand each other. When you come to me and say, I'm here for the common good. I'm here to help all of you guys. I have no idea what you're talking about. That is completely gibberish to me. So, no. Every dollar Steve Jobs is as productive as his previous dollar. Money doesn't sit in the mattress. Keynes was wrong. I know he's British, but he was wrong. He was at the LSE, wasn't at Oxford. Maybe that was the problem. He was wrong. The problem markets is not some ridiculous liquidity trap where people don't invest. I was also at the LSE. Yeah. No, I was mostly right. Many things wrong. I was wrong in many things. But it is critique of Keynes. I was joking about the LSE. It is critique of Keynes. He was absolutely right. The second point was, how people are valued. Some people are only worth $2 an hour. It's all they can produce. If you pay them $3 an hour, you lose money on it. They're just for whatever reason. They don't want to work hard because they're lazy or incapable. They can't do more than $2 an hour. When you put the minimum wage at $3, you basically guarantee that they will get $0. That's what you want. I think it's horrible. I think somebody making $2 an hour is much better than somebody making $0 and living off the stage. At least if you're making $2 an hour, you know you're working. You know you're contributing to your own life. And you're learning a skill which would one day allow you to make gazillions of dollars. Most of the multi-gazillionaires, at least in the 19th century, started out in a lot less than what minimum wage is today. And they built fortunes. But you want to deny somebody a job for life because you think it's inhumane to give them $2 an hour. People in other countries work for $1 a day. And it's not fair. It's wonderful. They should be. They live in abject poverty because they're not paid any. Naturally. What you want to do is kill them. What you want to do. And I'm completely serious about this. Those of us in there, again, this is middle-class, European and American, comfortable living. You don't have to worry about where your next meal will come from. You look at these poor kids in Indonesia and you want them dead because that's what you do if Nike moves away from Indonesia, those kids starve. And you can't understand that because the option is starvation or working for a buck a day. And I take working for a buck a day over starvation any day. And those kids will start at a buck a day and one day they'll make more than that. They'll waste the middle class. Those kids are on a buck a day because the people who are employing them refuse to pay them any more despite being able to afford to, despite being able to afford to. But don't you understand that their life is better off for a buck a day than it would be if it was zero a day? Yeah, but why can't we improve their lives further by compelling the employer to pay them even more? Because they're not that productive. That's the story. And as they become more productive and you could see this everywhere around the world including in the UK through the Industrial Revolution as workers became more productive their wages rose. And we started out in the UK at less than a buck a day. At a lot less than a buck a day. And by the end of the 19th century there was suddenly a middle class. Where did the middle class come from? From increases in productivity not from unions. Unions hook the middle class. They don't help the middle class. Yes.