 All right. Good afternoon. I'm hoping you're having a great Sunday. I guess it's football season. You know, I'm on this crazy European tour, so today you're getting me in Geneva, Switzerland. Again, probably a first in the history of the Belize radio network for a live show to be broadcast from Geneva, Switzerland. So no, this is being able to catch up with you as I travel through Europe and travel through the world. I did a number of events in France and in Paris. That was kind of interesting, interesting to talk about my ideas in Paris of all places in France. Be there for the strike on September 12th, a strike that didn't really happen, not much of a strike at all. And, you know, witness the fact that, you know, even in France, or maybe in France more than in other places, certainly more than the United States, it seems. Socialism is kind of a decline. The rabbit socialism, the union organizers in decline. Strike was insignificant. Strike was insignificant in France. I'm now in Geneva, beautiful, beautiful city. I'm on a hotel with a view of the lake, the beautiful lake and surrounded by, at least to the south, I guess, south, but really east and west. You get the Alps mountains, quite beautiful, a little cloudy today. It's probably gonna rain most of the day tomorrow, but, you know, it's a beautiful location. Geneva is a beautiful location. I'll be giving a talk here at the University of Geneva tomorrow evening, and we'll be talking about inequality, why I don't believe inequality is a problem, why I don't believe inequality is an issue. So that should be interesting, should be fun. Those of you who might live in Switzerland are invited. I don't know if I have any listeners. I know I actually do have listeners. I actually do have a few listeners in the Switzerland and Geneva area, and I expect them to be there tomorrow. So looking forward to that, I then go from there to Copenhagen, and in Copenhagen I'll be doing an event on free speech with Fleming Rose. I don't know how familiar you guys are with Fleming, but Fleming Rose was the guy who published the Danish cartoons in 2005 and caused, well, didn't cause, but as a consequence, there were those massive riots all over the Middle East. People died, and since then Fleming has massive security around him. His life is constantly under threat. The Islamist ISIS constantly threatens to murder him and kill him. So I'll be doing an event with him in Copenhagen on Wednesday. If you are in Copenhagen, I know some listeners from Copenhagen, or maybe even if you're in Melmo in Sweden, come on by. It should be a great event. I think we're talking about free speech, multiculturalism, how a society can survive when there are multiple cultures and when there are conflicts between those cultures in one geographic area. It should be an interesting event. Fleming is a fascinating character, and it's always, always interesting to do an event with him. I'll be doing events with him since 2006. 2006 we did our first event on American campuses showing, showing the cartoons. We blew them up, made them big posters, and had them behind us, and we did panel of panel discussions on free speech way back in 2006, way ahead of the curve, way before free speech became such a big issue as it is today on American campuses and elsewhere. So if you're in Copenhagen, if you're around, come join us or fly into Copenhagen. Join us, join us, and it should be a great event. Interesting. We're doing it at the Danish parliament, and the reason we do it at the Danish parliament is this is the second event I've done with Fleming there, is because the Danish parliament is a very secure building, and security is a big deal. And if last time I did an event with Fleming is the standard, we will have snipers on the roof, we will have policemen with machine guns everywhere. The security will be unbelievable. It will be, you would think, I don't know, you would think that G8 was meeting or something, it's just me and Fleming having a conversation. But it's going to be exciting, it's going to be fun, so I encourage you all to come. I'm hoping we get that taped, and we'll be able to put it up online in the future. By the way, those of you who don't know, I have a channel on YouTube, you can go to YouTube and search my name, Yaron Brook, Y-A-R-O-N-B-R-O-K. And I have a channel there, it would be great if you guys subscribe to the channel. I put up a lot of videos, a lot of content from these radio shows and other kind of podcasts that I do. So subscribe to my YouTube channel, you can also, of course, subscribe to follow me on Twitter and follow me or like me or whatever the hell it is on Facebook, I always get confused. And you'll get updates on everything that I do and all the different events. October is going to be a pretty busy month in terms of events, I'm doing events in the United States, in Wisconsin, in Minnesota, I'm in, sorry, in, no, Wisconsin, in Minnesota and in Michigan, in Minnesota, in Michigan, in San Diego, and I'm trying to, in Wyoming, in Denver, so I'll be all over the country in October and early November and you can keep track of me if you follow Twitter or Facebook. I'll also, I'll also be back in Europe in November, so lots of events planned for November in the UK, in Great Britain, and then Poland and Madrid. So that's kind of the November schedule and then we'll see, we'll see what happens after that. So follow me, that way you keep up to date. Otherwise, it's really hard to keep track. You know, you never know where I'm going to be. Tomorrow, right? Well, tomorrow I'm going to be here in Geneva. All right, let's see where, where are we? We are, I want to talk today about the fascinating article that was published a few weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal. But I just discovered it the other day. And it's, I think it's, it's, it's incredibly insightful and incredibly interesting about kind of the struggles of rural America and the reasons for those struggles. And what was interesting is that the article points out something I didn't realize. I kind of intuitively had a sense of it. But, but, but here they give statistics and they've actually measured this. And that is that in the past, when things got rough, when jobs disappeared in a particular county or particular district, particularly in rural America, but in the cities as well, Americans got up and they moved. They moved when, when farm jobs started disappearing because of technology and, and people moved into the cities. And when manufacturing jobs in various counties, sometimes in rural America, sometimes in, in, in, in the cities started disappearing, people got up and moved to where the jobs were. And one of the fascinating things about this article is that that doesn't happen anymore. Americans are not moving mobility, geographic mobility, moving from one place to another to find a better life, moving from one place to another to seek a better job. That is all gone. You know, people aren't doing it. And this is tragic. And, you know, I've said this, I think I've said this on this show, so many times that, you know, if you're in, if you're in Southern Ohio and steel jobs are going away, get in a car and drive to Northwest Arkansas where there are plenty of jobs, plenty of jobs. But Americans are not doing that. And, and I had an intuitive sense of that kind of just, just casual observation type of sense that that was happening. But now the Wall Street Journal has provided some statistics and provided a list of reasons. I think they miss out. They don't actually integrate the reasons. They don't come to a conclusion about the reasons. But I think they have some fascinating reasons for why this is happening. And that is what I want to talk about when we come back after this break is I want to talk about the lack of mobility in America today, geographic mobility, which I think is crucial, crucial for the health of the country, for the health of the economy, for the health of Americans to return to a mobile country. And, but, but we'll talk about that after this quick break. You're listening to your own book show on the Blaze radio network will be right back. And today broadcasting from Geneva, Switzerland, Switzerland, probably the freest country in, in, in Europe. And there's a consequence of being so free. Also, I don't know if it's the richest country in Europe on a per capita basis, but maybe one of my Swiss friends can, can let me know if that's true or not. But certainly one of the richest countries in, in Europe, a terrific country. It's always, it's always a pleasure to be here, stand of living high, nice cars on the street, I'm staying at a beautiful hotel, right on the lake. And it's just, it's just a pleasure to be here. It's always, it's always fun to be in Switzerland. You know, freedom works. What a shocker. Freedom works. It delivers the goods. Free, free markets, rights protecting, rights respecting property rights, protecting property rights, respecting contract law respecting, all of that actually works in Switzerland, where I am right now is, is a good example of that. So it works everywhere. It doesn't matter what continent, it doesn't matter what what the culture is. It actually works. If you get the system right. I mean, some cultures, you have to give it some time. But ultimately, it always works. And yet, nobody learns, nobody, nobody ever learns. It's astounding. Anyway, talk about not learning the United States is probably the country that has the most examples from which to learn. It is the country that used to be the freest and used to be the richest and and used to be the most flourishing and prosperous and everything else. And it used to have a labor force that was incredibly mobile. People would get in their cars or get on trains or get on wagons and horses and move to where the jobs are. And one of the things that made America such an economic dynamo was the fact that you could combine labor and capital and efficiently use them and efficiently as a consequence of this freedom, but not just freedom, but the willingness of people to take a risk to to leave their home, to leave their family and to go somewhere and to go to the unknown and and to go take a job in a place they didn't know and to go take a job where the capital was where people were investing so that in the 1980s, huge numbers of people moved to Silicon Valley and moved to California. And still there's some movement into California, although it's hard to tell the state of California makes it very difficult. In order to take advantage of this incredible technology boom and people left the Midwest because Midwest was still dying and they went away. There were jobs in 1980s. Another thing, another phenomenon that was happening was that the blacks who were engaged in in working manufacturing jobs in the Midwest and elsewhere and those jobs were disappearing were actually going back to the South, where they had come. So in the early part of the 20th century, blacks moved from Jim Crow laws and discriminatory South to the North to Detroit to other cities in the North in order to take advantage of all the manufacturing jobs, they and of the fact that there was less discrimination and of the fact that there was more freedom for them in these in these other countries. And they they moved from, you know, from rural agricultural South and discriminatory Jim Crow law South to the North, where suddenly many of them became part of the middle class and became part of part of industrial America and did very well did well as as the US as you as manufacturing did well during that period. And then during the 1980s when there's manufacturing jobs to disappear, where I, you know, a series of bad laws and bad policies in the Midwest, I destroyed those jobs and destroyed those economies. Those same black families move back to the South and they moved to Atlanta and they moved to Charleston and they moved to North Carolina and they moved to places in the South that were booming and places in the South where there was more economic freedom and places in the South where there were jobs. And now the discrimination in the South had declined. They felt free to go to the South and to again raise the standard of living in blacks in the South to be doing better as a consequence. But and then of course, there is the there is the 1930s and 1940s and even 19 to the 1950s. And really it started before that started in 1920s as agriculture became more and more efficient. And as a culture became more and more mechanized as the culture became more and more corporatized, that a small farm started disappearing because the advantages of scale that technology brought made the family farm basically unworkable and made it uncompetitive. People, you know, it used to be that 80% of the American population, I think 100 and something years ago, 80% to 90% of the American population were farmers. And today it's less than 1%. Where did all those people go where they got up and they left the farms and they went to the cities or they went to small towns. And they changed jobs and they found jobs and they did well. America's done well over the last 100 years. Americans have done well over the last 100 years. I don't know if you saw the statistic, but just I think last last week or the week before, it was announced that median income has hit the highest level in the United States in history. I think it's it's 59 something thousand dollars. You know, we've done well. And so people used to move. But what's interesting today is that in rural America today, in Trump country today, among the people who voted for Trump, there is almost no movement. Here's the is that this is out of the history of the people who moved across a county line in 2015 was just 4.1% a county line. We're not talking about states. We're not talking about county was 4.1% according to Wall Street Journal, right? That's down from 7.7%. So almost half in the 1970s and late 1970s. It's fallen faster in now it's fallen in metropolitan areas as well. So in metropolitan areas, people are moving mobility is less and you can see that people are not leaving places like, I don't know, let's say Cincinnati Cleveland like they did in the 1980s. Today, they're not so it but in the rural America, it's it's it's dropped even faster than it has in metropolitan areas. So now the mobility rate in rural America is lower than the mobility rate in metropolitan areas and here mobility rate means literally mobility literally moving to another state. So in spite of the fact that today unemployment in rural America is higher than it is in the cities, in spite of the fact that there's a massive shortage, truly a massive shortage of high skilled or skilled labor in certain metropolitan areas like Nashville like Denver, their jobs in Nashville and Denver, people in rural America are unemployed who are poor and not moving to these places, not moving to these places, sharp decline in in people's willingness to move. You know, we used to have just to give you a right that in right after World War Two, looking at these some of these numbers, mobility rates are some like 20% and today it's under 4%. So I think this is interesting. And of course, life is not good for these people. And the Washington Journal documents a number stories of individuals who hate living in in their little towns who who want a different life, but find themselves trapped psychologically trapped more than anything else, but we'll get to the reasons why they're trapped, but trapped in these rural communities, trapped in dead end jobs, trapped in dead end lives and are not pursuing their own happiness are not seeking a better life. And that's sad. It's sad and it's un-American. We are the people who pursue happiness. We are the people who will do anything to make our lives better to improve our lot in life. And yet, so many Americans, millions of Americans today are not doing that. All right, you're listening to your own book show when we get back, we'll talk about why this is happening. All right, this is your own book broadcasting today on the blaze radio network from Geneva, Switzerland. And we're talking about we're talking about the lack of mobility in America today, the lack of willingness of people to get up off their feet and move. By the way, if you have any any ideas on why or why you think this is happening, give us a call 888-900-3393-888-900-3393. Do you live in rural America? You know, what's life like? Good, great. You don't want to move or what? I'm really interested, particularly interested in hearing. If you would like to move but you feel like you can't or like there are no possibilities or there are no options for moving, then I'm curious. Let me know. Give me a call 888-900-3393. If you live in rural America and you don't think anybody should move out or you think people are not moving and there's a reason for that. I'm curious what you think the reason is. You know, yep, somebody just wrote online that they moved over 30 times for their job but they're burnt out. Yeah, after 23 times, I'd be burnt out too. I've moved many, many times, large distances. I'm likely to move again soon, more on that another time. But 30 times seems a little too much, a little too much. I'd get burnt out. I'd get burned out by 30 times. I get restless around, you know, seven or 10 years in one place. That's about as long as, you know, I really get restless. And I've been kind of in Orange County, California, living in Orange County, California for what now, 17 years, 18 years. Yeah, I'm burnt out and staying in the same place, so time to move. All right, so why is it? Why is it? And it's interesting, the story in the Wall Street Journal, they talk about this one county, I think it's in Michigan, Uggamal, I'm butchering the name, O-G-E-M-A-W County. It's a tiny county, 21,000 residents. But only one in a thousand has moved in a year, one in a thousand. That's amazing. And it's interesting because young people want to move. They say they want to move. They say they don't want to stay. They say they want a better life. They say they want to improve their lives. And yet in the article, and yet they say they can't move, they just can't make the switch. They try, they come back, they just can't do it. Something is stopping them. And it's interesting, it's interesting that that is actually happening. And it's not that they're doing well. So here it says that the thrift store manager at St. Vincent's DePaul, which I guess is in West Branch, it's, you know, oh it's the St. Vincent's DePaul thrift store in West Branch, which is in the county. He says that 80% of queries of financial help come from people under age 35. Now that's sad. That's incredibly sad when people under the age of 35 need help. These are the exciting years of life. These are life in which you're setting out on a career. This is when you're moving forward in life, starting to achieve things, starting to build some wealth, some build some skill to build your, what's called human capital, your skill set that will last you for the rest of your life. And yet, you know, they're not going anywhere. They're stuck. They feel stuck. Why? Why? All right, so let's get some of the reasons the article points out, which I think are fascinating. Because what you find is that all the reasons that the article points out are consequential to big government. The reason is, statism, the reason is government programs, government involvement, government intervention. What the article doesn't point out is the psychological cost of these. It's showing the existential cost, but what it doesn't show is the psychological cost, which is ultimately what is responsible for the inability of people to move, the inability of people to take risk, the inability of people to actually change their lives in meaningful ways. So what are the what are the problems? Problem number one, huge difference in the cost of housing between rural America and, you know, the city. So people who want to move to the city, they just can't afford it. Even though they're going to get paid more in the city, you know, the cost of housing is such today that it eats up huge percentage. I think they give an example of somebody in a lower-skilled job, 50% of their income would go to housing. Now, this is not a consequence of the market. This is not a consequence of capitalism. This is not a consequence of freedom, of freedom. This is a consequence of government regulation. And this article says that. I mean, the article is a good article because it identifies all the statist reasons that are causing this lack of mobility. And what they're saying is that land use regulations all over, you know, all over cities in America causes the cost of housing to go up dramatically, particularly at the lower ends. Because that is the counter-housing, it's not economical to build, giving those restrictions. Because there are restrictions on the type of housing, because of the restrictions on when, because of the restrictions on quantity, developers are going to build housing where they can have a margin, which means middle-class and upper-class housing. And they don't build, you know, starter housing. They don't build housing for young people. They don't build housing for low-income individuals. That's not because they don't want to. That's because they can't. The regulations, the housing regulations, the whole variety of building codes and land use regulations make it too prohibitively expensive to build that kind of housing, and therefore they focus on where they can make money. And as a consequence, it's too expensive for people to move to where the jobs are, for people to move to where they can increase their standard of living, to where they can increase their quality of life. It makes it impossible for people to move to those places where they can have a better life. Now, there are probably exceptions to this. The cities like Houston where it's relatively cheap, housing is relatively cheap, because there are no land use regulations and the regulations in terms of housing and so on. Now, right now, not a good place to move to, given the flooding. But it was and will be again, and my guess is other places in Texas and there are certain cities where housing is not that expensive. This explains some of it and there's no question to explain some of it, but it doesn't explain it all. Housing is unbelievable expensive. By the way, not only in the United States and the cities, this is true of London, it's true of Paris, it's true of almost every city in Europe. And the reason is that in all these places, environmentalists have forced these land use regulations, have forced green spaces, have forced restrictions on building high, or restrictions on building new or restrictions on building fell in the blank. And there is a massive shortage of housing. And when you have a shortage of housing, but high demand, because people want to move to these places, because these places are where there are opportunities, what do you get? When demand is high and supply is limited, you get increasing prices. And that's what you're seeing all over the world, particularly again, all over the world where environmentalists have any say in things. What you're seeing is massive increases in the price of housing because of these anti-life, anti-human life in environmentalists. All right, so cost of housing, one government program that is making it difficult for people in rural areas to actually move to the cities where the jobs are and to actually become more mobile. All right, if you live in a rural area, if you live anywhere, I don't really care. If you want in, if you've got a question about anything, it'd be nice if it was about this topic right now, but a question about anything, really, give us a call 888-900-3393, 888-900-3393, and we'll continue discussing all the status regulations that are bringing about this lack of mobility that are restricting on the pursuit of happiness in America today, how the state is destroying it when we come back after this break, you're listening to your own book show on the Blaze Radio Network. All right, we're talking today about mobility, about the lack of mobility in America, the fact that people don't move anymore. I've moved all my life, I've always moved to find better pastures and to find a better life and to seek out opportunities. My father did the same thing. My parents were actually born in South Africa, I don't know how many of you know this, but my mother was born in Durban, my father was born in Johannesburg, in South Africa, on the other side of the world, and they didn't want to stay in South Africa, they hid at apartheid and they dreamt of living in Israel and they got married and immediately after the wedding, got on a boat with nothing, with nothing and sailed to Israel and I was born a year later in Jerusalem and throughout my father's career, he moved to where there opportunities were and he took advantage of that. He spent time in the United States, he spent time in England, even within Israel, tiny little Israel. We lived in three different places, three different town cities in Israel, Jerusalem, Elat, which is at the southern tip of Israel and ultimately in Haifa, and then when I grew up and I decided Israel was in a sense too small for me, didn't allow for the opportunities that I wanted in my life, so I got up and again with nothing, with two suitcases, my wife and I got on a plane and my wife had never been outside of Israel, she'd never been on a plane before in her life, and yet she got on a plane and we traveled to the United States and traveled to a place we'd never been before, to Austin, Texas. I thought I was coming to the middle of the desert, I didn't realize how beautiful and amazing and green actually Austin, Texas is hot and humid as well, but you know, went to school and got my MBA and my PhD there, but you know, took off and had belief in ourselves, in our ability to succeed, and yeah, housing was going to be expensive, and yeah, it was going to be tough, and yeah, we didn't know what to do about it, healthcare insurance or anything like that, and we managed, and then you know, once we love Texas and we had great friends in Texas and we had a great time in Texas and both my sons were born in Austin, Texas, but then when the best job opportunity I had was in Northern California, I took it and became a university professor, it's a place there, and then when a different job came about that was better and would lead to a better life, we moved to Southern California, and you know, now we're getting ready to move again, because there are better opportunities and you gotta moving, moving is, you know, it's part of life, it's part of the pursuit of happiness, it's part of the self-improvement, it's part of finding better opportunities for yourself and for doing the maximum of life, just because you were born in a particular place, doesn't mean that particular place is the best for you, it's just arbitrary, it's just random, it's just a fluke that you were born in a particular place, go to where the best opportunities are, this by the way is one of the reasons why I am so passionately pro-immigration and why I believe in it and dramatically expanding legal immigration in the United States, because there are people who are ambitious, people who are good people, people who want to work hard, people who want to succeed in life, people who want to maximize their opportunities and would like to come here to do it and building a wall to stop them is nuts in my view and you know, welcoming them and enjoying the opportunities that they bring with them is what Americans have always done and Americans should continue to do, but think about Americans, Americans have always moved from the east to the west, from the north, from the south to the north, and then from the north to the south, from the rural to the city, from the city to the suburb, from one suburb to another, from one state to another, we are a nation on the move in pursuit of our happiness, in pursuit of the best, in pursuit of the best job, in pursuit of the best life, in pursuit of the most opportunities and the fact that mobility is disappearing is sad, we are a nation founded by people who got on ships and sailed into the unknown, crossed an ocean in order to get to a place that they didn't know they would have a job, they didn't know they would have a house, they knew nothing about it, there was no internet, there was no television, there was no radio, there was no phones and yet they showed up in this place and the government didn't help them and the government didn't stop them and the government didn't provide them with social benefits, housing guarantees, Medicare, Medicaid, they weren't restricted by licensing laws, we'll get to all of this after the next break, they just did it and think about the confidence and the self-esteem and the risk-take willingness to take risks and the great American tragedy today is that we've lost that, we've lost the willingness to take risks, we've lost that willingness, that confidence, that self-esteem that says, you know, I can move anywhere, I can do anything, I can go anywhere and I'll be okay, I'll be okay, I'll be better than okay, I'll do great and I'm gonna make my life the best life that it can be and that means, if that means moving a thousand miles, it means moving a thousand miles and if that means switching jobs, it means switching jobs and if that means taking some time off to retrain myself, it means taking some time off to retrain myself, there are no limits, as we'll see, the only limits that exist were created by government. All right, so we're talking about this lack of mobility and when we come back after this pretty long break, I want to go over, I've got another six reasons that article lists of how the state, how the government is limiting our mobility, how it's creating a hazardous environment for us to actually move. All right, you're listening to your Unbrook show on the Blaze Radio Network and we'll be back after this break and some news. All right, welcome to hour number two of the Unbrook show, broadcasting today from Geneva, Switzerland. It's about, what time is it over here? It's about 9, 906 p.m., not as bad as when we did this from Baku as a Bajan, where it was, it was a couple of hours even later at night, so not too bad here in Switzerland. All right, if you want in on the conversation, we're talking today about the lack of mobility in America, the fact that people are now moving from state to state, from county to county, they're now moving to seek new opportunities, new jobs, a better life. You can call in 188-900-339-3393. Let's do this again, 888-900-3393. All right, if you have any stories of moving or stories about how you sort of had a life by moving, or just if you have any comments on why it is that people are now moving and how the government is in a sense restricting on mobility for a few feet to give us a call, and we've actually got Bill on the line, Bill from California, wants to talk about this topic. Hey, Bill, how's it going? I'm okay. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. First of all, I'd like to say that I really admire you and I very much appreciate the work that you do, and I urge everyone to support ARI and help fund the work that you continue to do. Well, I appreciate ARI as the Einrand Institute. Some people are not familiar with the acronym. Tell me, Bill, what kind of experience do you have in terms of moving around the country and in terms of government and mobility? Well, I was born and raised in Wisconsin, and when I was a teenager, the Jimmy Carter administration was just coming on, and there was no work in the Midwest whatsoever. So I packed up my bags and I hitchhiked out to California, and I found work here. The California was booming. There was construction everywhere at that time, and it was easy to find a job, and it was inexpensive to live here. But now, since all the liberals from the East Coast moved out here in Ventura County, I live in Ventura County, we have an organization called Save Our Open Space. So we have a lot of agricultural land here, but it's becoming more and more difficult to farm it because a lot of homes have been constructed around the agricultural land, and more and more laws have been put into place that restrict the use of pesticides and herbicides and fungicides. So it's becoming more and more expensive to farm, and there's a labor shortage because of the immigration problem. So farming isn't really that comfortable anymore. Pay off that well now. But the Save Our Open Space is an environmental organization that has gotten a law passed that for the next 20 years, no agricultural land can be used for housing development whatsoever. So basically they're calling themselves Keep People Out, the Keep People Out Foundation. Yeah, and it's also pushed up the cost of housing to unbelievable prices. Sure, well maybe now's the time to sell in California and move somewhere cheaper. Yeah, well my wife and I are both retired, and actually we are thinking about that. Good, well thanks Bill, thanks for listening, thanks for calling, and you know, hope good luck with the move if you decide to make one. But Ventura County is hard to leave, it is a really beautiful country. Yes it is, thank you very much, and best premises. Sure, best premises to you. All right, so beyond Bill was saying how the land use restrictions, driving up costs, and making it impossible for people to move into Ventura County, California for example. But there are other reasons this article in the Wall Street Journal that describes this lack of mobility in the United States has. For example, government aid programs, remember a lot of these people in these rural counties are poor, they're on Medicaid, and it's very difficult, every state has different Medicaid programs, and it's very difficult to move from one state to another. You might not qualify in a different state, or the benefits might be different, and you're used to getting the benefits that you're getting. So Medicaid holds people back from moving, and this is true above and beyond Medicaid, other kind of welfare programs, so many welfare programs in the United States are state-based, and local-based, that people are afraid to lose the benefits, and if they move, even if they get a better job, it might actually be a reduction in income because of all the welfare they get, and all the benefits that they're getting. So it incentivizes people to stay put, to stay poor, to stay dependent on the state. Also, in rural areas today, there was a lot of low-income housing. You can't build it in the cities because it's very difficult, it's very expensive to build low-income housing, okay, think about that contradiction, because of land use regulations and because of generally housing regulations, but you can build low-income housing in rural areas and there's a lot of it. Now, low-income housing virtually didn't exist in rural areas a generation ago. There was no low-income housing. Here I mean low-income housing subsidized by government. So the government is subsidizing your housing, they're subsidizing your healthcare, they're subsidizing your income, and all this provides you a strong incentive, not to put any of that at risk, not to move anywhere. Now, this welfare mentality, I will call it, this entitlement mentality, this dependent mentality, extends beyond that because rural areas are also quite charitable, not so much charitable in terms of direct charitable contributions, but in terms of just the network that you probably established if you're poor and dependent, whether it's church groups or just businesses that might not charge you because you're going through bad times. There's a whole community built around this, but this is again, there's a whole culture of supporting dependency, of encouraging dependency, of sustaining dependency. It used to be true that in America, it used to be that we would help our neighbors, but we'd help our neighbors get on their feet so they didn't need our help anymore, but today the mentality that the government and welfare state is instituted within us is not to help us get on our feet, but to sustain us on our knees, to keep us crawling and begging and dependent. But here's another killer, this one I read, I knew about this and I've actually talked about this and I use this as examples in my talks all the time, but it never hit me in the context of mobility, but this is interesting, right? State-level job licensing requirements, particularly on low-skill professions, from bartenders to florists to turtle farmers and scrap metals recyclers, they all need state license, which costs money. And if you have a state license in state A, it doesn't necessarily transfer to state B. She had another state license in state B, so here you have these licensee requirements that both protect us, I don't know from whom exactly, but to protect us and what they're really doing is they're institutionalizing people into poverty, they're preventing people from moving, they're preventing people from working, they're preventing people from advancing in their careers in their lives. I mean, the Obama administration actually had a report about this that sounded the alarm over these licensing requirements, you know, one of the very, very, very, very few things that the Obama administration didn't do anything but said it was good. And they said that more than one quarter of US workers today, more than a quarter, more than 25% of US workers today, require a license to do their jobs. That is a five-fold increase since the 1950s, five-fold. And that explains so much. You know, you can fight poverty all you want, but if you don't provide people with jobs, if you don't make it easy for people to move, if you don't make it easy for people to adopt new jobs and to advance in their jobs and to invest in their jobs, if you acquire them to pay licensing fees, if you acquire them to take their hard-earned money and have to spend it on a government license, then you're destroying their opportunities. You know, nationwide, a study showed that barbers and cosmologists, you know, occupations tend to acquire people to pay new state licenses when they relocate. So every state has a different license for barbers and cosmologists. Because God forbid what that bad haircut might do to you. We need a license barbers. We need the state, the government, to give barbers a license. We need state-authorized barbers. So they are 22% less likely to move between states because of these licenses. I mean, it makes me so angry and it should make you so angry. And nobody talks about this. Nobody talks about this. I mean, there's one institution that does a good job about fighting this, which is the Institute for Justice, which sues states over some of these licensing laws. But so much more could be done. I was the president of the United States. These people are the ones who voted for him. Shouldn't he be seeking their interests out? What about a federal law that, you know, in spite of this goes against federalism, that bans state licensing of professions? Any licensing of professions? Suddenly blue-collar type of jobs like this. I mean, it's absurd. I mean, I can understand why people are a little reluctant to do a weird licensing of doctors. We can debate that. But barbers and cosmologists, turtle farmers, forests, forests, you need a state license to be a forest? What's the damage you're going to do if you don't get a license? Go to jail for not having a license and being a farmer, staraging flowers? I mean, give me a break. Our country's gone nuts. Insane. And this is at the state level, not at the federal level. This is where Republicans control what, two-thirds of all state houses, they control two-thirds of all governorships at least, where there are so-called free market Republicans, where there are Republicans who care about jobs, where there are Republicans who care about, you know, people. Supposedly free market people, right? These are supposed to be free market politicians. They could do this. They don't need the federal government. They don't need Democrats to help them. You want to help the US economy? You want to help freedom in America? Republicans, get rid of state licensing laws in your state. All right. Let me calm down over this break. You're listening to your own book show on The Blaze, Radio Network. All right. I'm broadcasting for Geneva, Switzerland, today. And I think I've calmed down a little bit, a little bit. So, yeah, I mean, these licensing laws are insane. And they restrict human advancement and human flushing. And why do they exist? They exist because of some goody-two-shoes state legislatures who want to so-called protect the public, but really why they exist is because the people in those professions lobby for the existence so that they don't have competition. If you're a barber and you're charging X, you know, you want to limit competition and you want to feel like you're important so you have a license and your profession needs a license. Do you know that computer programmers don't need a license? I don't want to give anybody ideas, but think about it. Computer programmers. These are the people who program, I don't know, nuclear power plants. These are people who program autopilots on airplanes. These are people who program medical devices. These are people who program every significant device that we run our lives on. They don't have a license. Good. I'm so glad. Nothing. You know, airplanes don't fall out of the sky because of bad programming. Nuclear power plants have not exploded because of bad programming. You know, yeah, once in a while we have a bug on our computer, but generally computer programmers do a good job without a government license. How can that be? How can it happen? How can it happen that the government is not protecting us and things are okay? It's insane. Anyway, so lack of mobility because of licensing. Yeah. By the way, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook. You're on Brooke. Y-A-R-O-N-B-R-O-OK. On Facebook, it's Y-Brook. Y-B-R-O-O-K. Like me on Facebook. All right. Other things that Article mentions that I thought was interesting. Growing cultural divide. People in rural America tend to be more religious. People in rural America tend to be less tolerant of immigrants, of gays, of a different lifestyle. And they feel, when they go into the city, they feel, I don't know, I guess from the article at least, the people they interviewed there, people feel insecure. They feel threatened by other people's lifestyle. Again, that suggests to a different America, right? I mean, when our ancestors came here from wherever, they weren't worried about the lifestyle of the people living in another place. I know, you know, my ancestors who came to America in the 19th century came from little Jewish villages in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Poland or Russia or Ukraine or Lithuania or wherever. And they came to bustling cities that had everything. I'm sure, you know, they had things that these Jews could not imagine existed. And they survived. They did pretty well, I'd say in America. They did very well because they put their heads down and they worked hard and they took care of their kids and they valued education and they did great. And yet today, again, with such winers and passive and want to be taken care of and not willing to take risk. One of the factors mentioned in the article, the last factor really, is the eroding trust in one another. Now, this is fascinating to me. It says that the share of Americans who agree with the statement, quote, most people can be trusted, has fallen over the last four decades to 31%. That's in 2016, from 46% in 1972. Now, note, 1972 crime rates were much higher than in 2016, much higher. And people trusted each other much more. Now, why is that? Now, there's a lot I can say here and there's a lot to say about this and, you know, unfortunately, we have limited time. And I've got two callers in the line, although I'll take the callers. Skylin and Jennifer, I'll take the calls after the next break. And there's still one more topic I want to get to today. But why is trust indicate? And I think, again, this goes to government. What the government does is it pits us against one another. When the government takes from one person and gives to another, that generates resentment. Is that the person taking my stuff? Is that the person benefiting from me? When the government regulates some and doesn't regulate others, licenses some and doesn't license others, regulates some more harshly than it regulates others and forces laws differently for some than it does for others. It engenders a culture and mentality, an attitude among people that is distrustful. When you don't have equality before the law, when you don't have equality of rights, you're constantly looking over the shoulder asking who is, who's with me and who's against me? Who's voting for these bastards who are doing what they're doing to me? So you've got, and this is partially why Democrats hate Republicans and Republicans hate Democrats and they hate each other now. They never used to hate each other the way they do today. But it's because there's so much redistribution of wealth, there's so much control, there's so much regulation, there's so much pitting one person, one group against another. What we have today is group pressure politics. Everybody's scrambling to get their piece of the pie. We don't have individual rights, we don't have freedom, we don't have capitalism anymore. We have a bunch of groups, we have a bunch of special interests just scrambling to get their piece at my expense. And I resent that and if I don't trust people. See, trust in America is maybe at the lowest that's ever been. I'm sure it's at the lowest that's ever been. All right, when we get back, we're going to talk more about what the causes, the psychological causes, the entitlement mentality. You're listening to Iran Bookshow on the Blaze radio network. Hey, you're listening to Iran Bookshow broadcasting today from Geneva, Switzerland. And we're talking about this was the journal article, fascinating article published a few weeks ago about mobility in America. And the fact that Americans are not moving, particularly in rural America, which you're seeing as people in rural America not moving to where the jobs are not moving to other states, not moving to the cities or to the towns where the jobs actually exist. I've said all along, I've said for months, really for almost a year now, if you live somewhere where there are no jobs, I know places that are booming. And I use Northwest Arkansas just because I was there and I saw the cranes and I know people there and it really is a booming part of the country. And it shocks me that people are not just moving there from places that are doing well. And this article is listed a bunch of reasons how government makes it hard for people to move because the cost of housing in some of these places, because of licensing laws, that's a big one. Because of welfare and all the different welfare programs, including Medicare and local income housing and everything else that actually it incentivizes people to stay put. But it's more than just incentivizing people. It is a psychological impact over generations. And remember, we've had the welfare state now, certainly the kind of welfare state we have today, we've had since the late 1960s, since the Johnson administration, since the war on poverty began, we've had this welfare state and the welfare state inculcates a certain mentality. It's a mentality of entitlement, a mentality of victimhood, a mentality of dependence, a mentality of what is it, of being static, of immobility, of waiting for the handout, of just sitting there and waiting. You know, in Paris, I was in Paris and I was staying at a very nice hotel in a very nice part of Paris. And all over the streets around it, I noticed the same phenomena. I noticed these families, mother, father and a child or two, little children. It was cold in Paris and it was raining, sitting in the cold in the rain on the pavement with a handout, basically begging. And I've seen this all over Europe and usually they are gypsies. But these were all, you could tell, these were all Arabs, these were all Middle Easterners. Now, put aside that fact, but here they are just sitting there, putting the handout. And it looks organized because like in every other corner, there's a family and the families all look the same. I mean, it's almost comical. But that kind of mentality of just sitting static, not seeking out a better life, not, I mean, they at least, I mean, if they're good guys, they at least try trying to seek out a better life in the sense that they move from Paris, from Syria or wherever to Paris. But in America, there's no excuse for this. There's no excuse for sitting around. There's no excuse for staying in your hometown. I mean, it's a wonderful life. I don't know if you saw the movie. It's a wonderful life. The hero stays in his little town in spite of the fact that he dreams of going to Paris and having a career and going to the city and doing those stuff. And there's this notion that it's American to stay in your hometown and to invest in your hometown and to keep your home friends and high school friends. No, that's anti American. And that movie, by the way, is one of the most anti American movies ever made partially because of that. America's about following your ambition. America's about following your dream. America's about grabbing life and embracing it and doing what it takes. But a generation brought up, a couple of generations are brought up on the welfare state. They lack self-esteem. They lack a self-independence. We've driven that sense of independence out of them. We've destroyed their self-esteem. They fear, fear, fear change. And you can see that again in so many people in their electorate and many of the people who voted for Donald Trump, what they fear is change. What they fear is freedom. What they fear is competition. They want things to stay the same. And of course, they don't stay the same. Manufacturing jobs are only going to disappear more. Nobody's going to bring the jobs back. And instead of going and finding better jobs, new jobs, finding greener pastures, they just sit on their butts and go nowhere and do nothing. Not good. Not good. That's not what America's about. All right. We got Skyler in the line. Hey, Skyler, your dad was a Marine. You moved a lot? No, no, no, no. I'm a Marine. Oh, you're a Marine. Okay. Yes. Sorry about that. That's fine. That's okay. No, but just a few brief biographical details. I started out in South Carolina in training, went to North Carolina, went to Mississippi, went to Arizona, went to California, back to Arizona, back to Delaware. So I traveled around the states a few and I got a chance to, you know, of course this is government mobility. I mean, one of the proper functions of government, the military, but it's just one of the opportunities for a young guy or girl that wants to break free from little small town life like me with Newark, Delaware. And I went to see, I went to the world, I didn't get to, for, there is no God, but God, thank God, I didn't get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Yeah, no kidding. Um, but, but, um, but you, but you saw the country. You saw some states that you might not have seen otherwise. Now let me ask you, Skyler, so now you live in Delaware, you're back in Delaware. If there was an opportunity in Chicago, if there was an opportunity in Nashville or in Houston, Texas to better your life and improve your life, would you pack up and leave Delaware and go? Immediately. I mean, without hesitation, I got to do with the Marines. With the Marines, I said, I said, this is my ticket out and I'm getting a good compensation from the Marine Corps for retirement from, uh, from a medical condition. And I appreciate, you know, the fact that I'm able, I'm still able minded, so able body to do basically whatever job. But I feel like, you know, since I'm a writer, uh, I mean, I can, I can use the, utilize the internet as, as much as I can. Yeah, you can live anywhere. Being a writer is, is beautiful because you can, you can really live anywhere. And that's great. Live anywhere. Yeah. Great. Well, thanks. Thanks, Skyler. Thanks for your service in the military. Thanks for helping defend, uh, defend our freedoms. And, uh, I'm sure we'll be talking soon. And, uh, let's see, let's go quickly to, uh, uh, Jennifer in Michigan. Hey, Jennifer. Hi. Um, I was wondering if recently maybe some people from states that have problems, like, let's say California, they don't understand the ideas that cause those problems. So they move to somewhere better and then they bring those ideas with them. And then the same problems happen in a new place. And that might start cutting down on places people can go. I mean, yeah, I think, but people are moving. I mean, people, net migration is into California. So California is still growing as a state. Most of the net migration out, most of the migration out of California is poor people because they can't afford the cost of living in California. So they moved to Arizona and Nevada and Texas and other places. Some wealthy Californians have moved, obviously, many of them to Seattle and to Oregon and to, and to other, and to Texas. And, and yes, many of them are bringing their lousy ideas and their lousy political views to these other states. Uh, but California's still a growing state. So more people are moving in primarily because of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. If you want to be a movie star, you still go to Los Angeles. And if you want to be, if you want to be involved in a startup, you still go to, uh, you still go to Silicon Valley. I just wish there was more of that. There, there's more of that striving. And I wish people, not as many people moved into California because California is such a regulated, horrible, high-tax state. It's a beautiful state and wonderful people. But, um, still, I wish people, um, I wish, I wish California suffered the consequence of its bad policies, which it will one day. But, but, uh, you know, we're delaying that ending. Um, but, uh, people move, but they're, they're not moving anywhere like they used to, which is, again, which is sad. Yeah. But yeah, it would be good if everybody moved to the state's door for you and, and adopted the, the politics of the state that were for you. Right. They need to realize why they're going there. Yeah. That would be nice. That would be nice in our dreams. All right. Thanks, Jennifer. Appreciate the call. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Skyler. Thanks, Jennifer. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. We'll get back. We're going to wrap up this topic. I'm not going to get to talk about anything else today. It turns out, and, uh, but I want to, I want to emphasize a few things before we wrap up on this and, uh, we'll have other shows to cover other things. All right. You're listening to your own book show on the blaze. Radio network will be right back. So what has made America special? What makes America unique, the greatest country in human history? It really is. It boils down to freedom. It boils down to individual freedom, the freedom to do what? Well, the freedom to live, the freedom to make your life better, the freedom to pursue the values necessary for your own flourishing, the freedom, the freedom to pursue your happiness, the ability to do so and, and, and the, where the government protects you and leaves you alone to exactly pursue that freedom, that happiness, those values. And as we lose that freedom and we lose it because the government did to supposedly with the excuse of trying to make our lives better, trying to protect us, trying to shield us from the woes of reality. The government lavishes us with welfare and licensing laws and redistribution of wealth and regulations and controls, all in the name supposedly of making our lives better. But as they do that, as they do that, the unintended consequences, actually they're not that unintended. The powers, the people in power actually do intend this. The unintended or intended consequences. In other words, the consequences, the consequences, a better word for this is the unseen consequences of that it starts changing the mentality of the country. You see, when America's founded, founded on the principle of individual rights, founded on the principle of liberty and freedom and the pursuit of happiness, people from all over the world came here with the idea of pursuing their own values, of the idea of, of exploiting this freedom to make their lives the best lives that they could have. They came here with dreams and great ambition. And Americans, Americans back then, you know, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 200 years ago had no problem getting on wagons and driving west. They didn't know what was west. There were Indians in the west. There were people who would kill them in the west. There were real risks in the west, but they wanted that freedom. They were ambitious. They want to get rich or at least to own some land, to raise a family and do it their way without other people telling them how they should live. So Americans in their DNA had this notion of, of going where their opportunities were, of exploiting the freedom that they had in this country, of pushing and pushing and pushing the envelope to, to, to living the best life that they could live. And as the welfare state grows, over the last hundred and something years, certainly since the new, the, the, the, the new deal, certainly since the 1930s, you know, in the, in the 1930s and 1920s, people were embarrassed to take welfare. People didn't want to take welfare, even charity they didn't want. It was a mark of shame. It hurt their pride. They were proud in their ability to work and to take care of their families, to put food on the table. But slowly, people have become accustomed to the government feeding them, the government providing for them, the government protecting them. And this is not just the, the, the, the, the, you know, the poor. This is everybody. This is the middle class that wants to be protected from everything. That wants to come and to regulate everybody. The, the, the wants everybody to be licensed. God forbid you, you shouldn't have to make a choice. You know, it's the middle class that demands to, to have social security so they don't have to save, to have Medicare, so they don't have to worry about healthcare when they get old. It's the middle class. It's, it's, it's everybody. It's the whole culture now has become entitled dependent. And what we've lost is the self esteem, the independence, the courage, the, the audacity to seek out a better life, to go where nobody had gone before, to do what nobody had done before. You see that spirit. This is why I say in spite of everything, in spite of the politics, in spite of all the horrific policies, I love Silicon Valley because there at least people have imaginations and they follow their ambitions and they pursue their dreams. But other than there and some other places that we're losing that in America, we're losing it and it's tragic and we've become fearful and we elected a president who reflected that fearfulness. We were afraid of strangers. We're afraid of foreigners. We're afraid of competitors. We're afraid of trade. Whoever believed that Americans would be afraid of trade America, the mightiest, greatest, greatest country in human history. Afraid of trading with the Chinese, afraid of competing with, with immigrants coming across the border legally or illegally. But that's where we are today because of the government, because of the entitlement, because of welfare, because of, because we have delegated to the government to protect us, to protect us from each other. And each group in America today, each group in America today competes for the pie, for the resources. And now we've started to resent people who have wealth and it's all the same. It's all the psychology of entitlement, the psychology of need, the psychology of a welfare state. It's a psychology of Europe that now exists in America. And, and, and that is, wow, that is so tragic. That is so tragic. And that's what we're fighting for. We're fighting to resurrect the spirit of America that existed 150 years ago. We're trying to resurrect the spirit of the 19th century, the spirit of the founders, the spirit of self-reliance and independence and self-esteem and courage and risk-taking. That's what the show is about. That's what we're trying to do on The Iran Book Show. All right, we'll be back next week, same time, same, well, not same place. We'll be somewhere else in the world. Talk to you then. You're listening to The Iran Book Show on the Blaze radio network. All right, thanks. So next week, you're doing the pre-tape one. And then the week after that, I'll be in New York, but we should also test it out like about an hour before, if that's okay. Okay, thanks, Ellie. Talk to you next week. Bye. All right, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, that's it for today. Those of you asking your relevant questions, I'll have to get to them another time. All right, bye. Don't forget to share this. And ideally, share the blog top version, which will be posted later today, or the YouTube version that will be posted later today, where we take out all the commercials, and it's a cleaner version. All right, see you all later. Bye.