 This talk is is related to my my new book the problem with socialism and the idea for this book Came from you know, some of you might be familiar there been opinion polls. There was a Pew Foundation poll that said 69% of Voters under 30 said they could vote for a socialist for president in the United States and there was a you gov comm poll of Millennials that is people born between 1982 and 44% of them said they preferred socialism over capitalism and so my publisher regularly publishing they contacted me and and we talked about You know the need for a book that would explain why this is a bad idea You know, you know so mark marketing a book to the millennials in particular and my editor there said We want every conservative parent to buy this book and give it to their kids before they go off to college What's in the in the schools or in one of the blurbs for the book Walter Williams? Wrote that here's what he wrote It's a worthwhile investment for parents with college-age children to buy two copies And one for them and one for the kids and then he said he calls universities Socialist indoctrination camps in before before you send your child off to socialist indoctrination camp Give them some ammu ammunition intellectual ammunition. And so that's that's the purpose of the book And so what I thought I'd do today is another an alternative title for the talk could be How to argue with your Bernie Sanders following roommates back at school Something like something like along those lines. And so it's 16 short chapters They're short, but I tried to make them as concise as possible and there are several hundred footnotes to the book So it's based on all of our literature But written up in a sort of economics in one lesson type of style So I'm gonna go over some you know as many of these as I can get through some of the you know one or two of these This crowd probably doesn't need to hear about too much but I'm gonna do it anyway because I We have a diverse crowd here. Well, first of all, you know, what is socialism all these the millennials who say Yeah, socialism is the good thing for my future I hope to I like to assume they don't really know what it is what it is You know, and then if they do learn they'll change their minds But what it is the way I define it is first of all it includes the traditional definition of government ownership of the means of production So any nationalized industries government-run industries and I do have a chapter called islands of socialism It's about government-run enterprises. They're not nationalized But it's the state government or the local government, you know hospitals schools all the things that governments run But then in the 1976 edition of the road to serfdom Hayek Wrote that the meaning of socialism had evolved by that time to include Government income redistribution programs through the welfare state and the progressive income tax And he said that the goal was always ostensibly Equality the pursuit of material equality egalitarianism was always the goal but the means evolved from nationalization of industry to the welfare state and the progressive income tax and the progressive income tax of course is Plank number two in the communist manifesto plank number one is abolition of private property And then the second most important goal of Marx and Engels was a progressive income tax in capitalist economies Because they thought it would it would help to destroy capitalist economy undermine capitalist economies so Part number one is nationalized industries part number two is the welfare state and the Progressive income tax and then I also include what Misi said in his book socialism in one of the latter chapters He said that socialists have always had a dual strategy The parts the first part of the strategy was to nationalize as much as possible to have the government run as much as possible second part of the strategy is what Misi's calls destructionism To destroy the private property free enterprise system with heavy taxes heavy regulations inflation Whatever works, you know Taking over the educational system and brainwashing the kids and With the virtues of socialism and the evils of markets, whatever works destructionism And so with that definition is not the old early 20th century definition of government ownership of the means of production It's much broader So I have 16 chapters in the book 16 short it covers a lot of ground if you look up the website of Democratic Socialists of America for example, they highlight a a super minimum wage as one of their top objectives And so that's not government ownership of the means of production But it's a government mandated $15 an hour minimum wage And so I so I take I take it from the horse's mouth in other words by looking up What the socialists of our day are saying they want? And just last night Hillary Clinton looked at Bernie Sanders and said your cause is our cause to Bernie And so I guess you could look at the Democratic Party platform and a lot of the Republican platform as being social Socialism or socialistic as far as that goes. So that's what it is Point number two I wrote down here I probably probably don't need to explain this to this group that socialism will destroy your economic future And so I write a little bit about the history of The Soviet Union for example our friend Yuri Maltsev who has taught at Misi University in the past Was an advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev who defected from the Soviet Union and when he defected he ends up It's a very interesting story. I don't have time here to tell Yuri's story But he ends up in the office of Dick Cheney who was the Defense Secretary at the time And he told Cheney that the Soviet economy was no more than five percent of the US economy And Yuri's story is that well Cheney says well our CIA says it was it's more like 50% and Yuri was insistent No five percent and he was right. And so the country with the largest natural resource base on the planet It really had no economy and he's five percent of our economy at most and it never produced a single Product marketable on international markets with the exception of possibly of caviar But that comes from a fish and not a factory And so And so it'll certainly ruin your your economic future And I also talk about you know when India gained its independence They adopted a sort of a Soviet style five-year economic plans And India became synonymous with third world poverty But India was one of the once one of the wealthiest countries on earth You know a long long time ago, but when they had more economic freedom They've they've made improvements since those days But it was a terrible disaster that they went in that direction. Africa did the same thing After the after colonization ended all these African countries Adopted socialism of one form or another in central planning And if you're interested in that particular topic the author one of the authors that I cite is George Ayette Who's written many books on this He last I was in touch with George. He was teaching at American University in Washington, D.C. And he's he's from Ghana, but he's been in the u.s. for many years So if you're interested in that you read George and uh, and he uh, you know, he's written books on how Africans had you know, they had a culture of entrepreneurship and individualism You know before colonialism And instead of going back to that culture they their governments embraced socialism and central planning And you know the rest is history and so if you want to destroy your economic future There's no shortage of examples Argentina did the same thing the the latest example would be venezuela, which I'll talk about in a minute Point number three Is you cannot fix socialism You know, I've been at this quite a while and whenever if I write op-eds criticizing some government program or Some government regulation or legislation or something like that I will inevitably get email from somebody Who says but we can fix this we can get smarter people in charge Or we can do it like they did it over there in that country or something like that But the thing about socialism, of course, is there are inherent reasons why it inevitably fails as an economic system regardless of who's in charge And and I lay it out in my book to uh to a lay audience And you know the three basic reasons are the the incentive problem the old incentive problem And I don't know maybe some of you have heard this story before but if we used uh If we use socialism to to grade the exams at mesis university You know, we have these written exams and then tomorrow we start the oral exams What we would do with that we would tell the faculty when we do the oral exams tomorrow give each student a Number of points maybe from one to ten if you're an a plus student you get ten during our interview with you Okay, and then we'll add up all the points divide by the number of students and give all give every student a marginal fail Or some of the same grade or or marginal pass some sort of mediocre Same grade that's that would be social using socialism That's the incentive system, you know, it causes the free rider problem If there's no link between effort and reward you get less effort um Reason number two is high x knowledge problem The idea that it's the information of time and place decentralized knowledge that makes an economy work And uh and and so the pretense is that a small group of politicians or government planners Could possibly possess all the knowledge That's in the minds of millions of people of consumers and workers and investors and managers And that's why Hayek called it the pretense of knowledge And the third reason of course is the calculation problem Uh without without private property and free market prices Uh, you don't have the guidance of free market prices. It comes in becomes impossible to organize production Uh without uh without prices determined by supply and demand It all becomes chaos. It's kind of like trying to make your way through a foreign city Without street signs and without prices based on supply and demand And so and so these are the reasons it doesn't matter who's in charge Socialism is economic poison for all of these these three reasons And that's why it has destroyed every economy where it's ever been in tried Point number four Is the myth of democratic socialism And we hear a lot about this that uh And I can remember uh, maybe some of you saw uh, Larry david on saturday night live portraying bernie sanders Have you have you seen him? You know, you know, he has he's a white-haired old guy and it kind of looks like bernie sanders You know, you look at kind of like the crazy chemistry professor look with a hair everywhere and you know Bdi's and bulging vane in his forehead. You know, that's bernie sanders. Anyway It kind of reminds me of a of a thinner Nikita krushev when he gives speeches he leans forward he screams into the microphone and he's pounding his fist and And uh, and uh, he did by the way, bernie spent very charmingly spent his honeymoon in moscow When it was a young man in the in the darkest days of the soviet union He chose moscow of all places for for his honeymoon. His wife must be a real sweetie to to of uh Go along with stuck with him for all these years after he took her to moscow in the 1960s and uh but but uh, but democratic socialism uh Look at venezuela today They adopted democratic socialism. Well, my story about saturday night live is uh sanders one that is saying there's a huge difference between socialism and democratic socialism and in uh In the comedian said oh huge spelled with a y is it so yeah huge Like that, but there is no difference, you know socialism is socialism Obamacare is a form of socialized medicine Doesn't matter if it was imposed on americans by a dictator or by democracy It's still the same thing And it's still it's still going to be just as chaotic and disruptive doesn't matter how it's imposed socialism is basically the the forceful imposition Of a government plan or set of plans on society that replaces individual plans For their own lives and for their own careers And so you can do that through a majority rule vote or you can do it through a dictator But you still get the same thing Friedrich bastia wrote that and made that very point in the law Published in 1850. So this is um, this is nothing original with me But venezuela today they adopted socialism and uh democratic socialism in 1999 and today their economy is Is a shambles middle-class people who had very good jobs Venezuela has more oil than saudi arabia Are out rooting through garbage in the streets looking for food to eat They got hyperinflation of 1600 a year at least a hamburger and caracas will cost you the equivalent of $170 today And animals are starving people are abandoning their pets And it's just anybody who can leave is leaving and so they they've destroyed What was once the wealthiest country in latin america in about 15 years with with socialism democratic socialism Same with argentina did the same thing brazil bolivia same thing Sweden is this country that is often talked about by the bernie sanders and hillary clinton As as a model for americans. We should be more like the scandinavian countries But the truth about sweden is that sweden was very prosperous from the late 19th century till about the 19 till about 1950 Because it had a limited very limited government low taxes high degree of economic freedom that produced all these great inventors like alfred nobel who invented dynamite The people who created volvo and sob automobiles refrigeration technology and a lot of other businesses and products and then they adopted first they sort of Experimented with fascism and then they moved to socialism and by nationalizing a number of industries Creating a big welfare state heavily progressive income tax and lots of regulation of what was left of private businesses and as a result Sweden had zero job growth from 1950 until 2005 According to the swedish economic association They did not have one single net new job created for 55 years Which means they were basically eating up the capital that was created by the earlier generations of entrepreneurs and capitalists And taxing it away and it created a bit of a crisis for them as you would imagine And so they did what government socialist governments always do Is try to print their way out of trouble and bail themselves out By printing money and they printed so much that they had 500 interest rates in sweden at one point And that that caused them a bit of a reaction Sort of a margaret thatcher style revolt where they uh, they privatized some industries. They deregulated Banking and a number of other industries cut marginal tax rates and made a bit of a comeback But sweden today still has per capita income less than mississippi Which is the poorest state in the united states And so when when when people make the case that well, we're successful in scandinavia It was before they adopted socialism. Yes scandinavia was sweden was successful economically They had the highest per capita income growth from 1870 until about 1940 in the whole world And and then they abandoned that they threw it all away In uh in denmark I quote a danish economist saying that you know, they have such heavy taxation in addition to the income tax Which is quite heavy and quite progressive. There's there are things like 180 sales tax on cars when you buy a car National sales tax. I think it's 25 percent and he said the total tax take That uh, this danish economist I quote is about 70 percent And so, uh, you know the government takes 70 percent of your of your income And so uh in following my friend walter williams I would point out that That a good definition of slavery is forcing a person to work for the benefit of another person That's a pretty good definition of slavery now the real slaves were slaves for 12 months out of the year But the danes are slaves for just 70 percent of the year so they're not quite as bad off as real slaves They're they're only slaves to other people for 70 percent of the year instead of instead of 20 30 percent of the year and of course they get something back from from from this I guess and so and hayek addressed this this whole issue of democratic socialism to explain that It's like oil and water Socialism eats away at and destroys democracy Eventually and i'll read you one little passage from hayek To give you a one some idea of uh the type of thing that he says about this Is that the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life socialism Will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming Dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans and admitting failure He would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and inhibited are likely to be more successful in a socialist society This is from the road to serfdom by hayek And so you know for the reason they gave earlier socialism always fails And then the politicians never admit failure and they never give up They grab more power and a lot of the public will will want a strong man the public will come out of favor Yeah, we need a strong man or a strong woman to be in charge and become more dictatorial And of course, that's the opposite of what we think of as democracy And so that's that's just one of the reasons hayek gave quite a few others But i don't have the time to go into a review of the road to serfdom here and in this lecture But but that's just one part of his logic of how socialism is actually destructive of democracy. It's not compatible Point number five. I would make is it's it's false it's false that socialism produces equality And I deny that it's even a moral objective. I think it's an immoral objective I I I have a chapter entitled egalitarianism Versus human nature and of course, we're all different. We're all made different We'll have different interests and in degrees of intelligence and strength and biological characteristics and so forth So when the government devotes itself to the pursuit of forceful equality It becomes more and more totalitarian because that's the only way you can get it And what it really has become the push for equality is sort of a war on the division of labor A war on the international division of labor, which is what makes the economic world go around We all specialize in something in our work lives We make money doing that and then we trade with other people who specialize in other things If we didn't do it's what it's what keeps human civilization together as mesis wrote in human action the international division of labor So the socialists like marks and angles knew what they were doing when they attacked the division of labor in the name of equality Which always sounds so nice, you know equality They knew they were destroying the heart of The capitalist system that keeps human civilization together the international division of labor Okay, and so that's why they went after it and I quote I don't I quote more than just economists in this chapter. For example, I quote hl manken on in one page And since I have an opportunity to quote hl manken And not all of you are familiar with hl manken. So, uh, I'll introduce you to to something The story has it that uh, murray rothbard on his wedding night with his wife joey spent the whole night laying in bed reading hl manken quotes to each other and laughing their heads off In the and I believe that's a true story. I think it was joey that told us that Years ago at them probably had a mesis university. I always wonder if that's why they never had children, you know myself But um, but who knows, uh, you know, I don't I didn't know them that well, but uh, but anyway, so so Manken was murray's favorite, uh, writer as far as you know, uh People who they really had a touch for for bashing the state and here's one of the things he said, uh The great manken about this topic of equality and egalitarianism said all government in its essence is a conspiracy Against the superior man. It's one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior Only in law against the man who is superior. In fact, if it be democratic Then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way Against both one of the primary functions is to regiment men by force to make them as much alike as possible And as dependent upon one another as possible to search out and combat originality among men All it can see in an original idea is potential change and hence an invasion of its prerogatives That is invasion of government's prerogatives The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself Without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos In quote, that's what political correctness is all about, isn't it to censor all all these Uh, uh, criticisms of the superstitions and taboos that we're all supposed to believe in at the hands of the state And that reminds me of another thing Hayek said in the road to social road to serfdom Is that under under any kind of collectivism where you call it socialism or fascism or anything They're sort of the end of truth one of the chapters is called the end of truth because Truth becomes something that is handed down by the state and is enforced By its enforcers in the media and academe and elsewhere It's not something that is discovered through discussion and conversation Research and learning it's something that is told to us by the state And then anybody who questions that is dealt with that's under socialism in one way or the other And that really is what political correctness is all about, isn't it? I also cite, um Kurt Vonnegut is a non-economist here And uh In his famous essay Harrison Bergeron who sort of spoofs the whole idea of equality forced equality At the hand of the state not equality into the law, but the state's attempts to make everybody equal in some way And here's what Vonnegut said he said the year was 2081 and everyone was finally equal They weren't only equal before god and the law they were equal in every which way Nobody was smarter than anybody else Nobody was better looking than anyone else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else All this equality was due to the 211th 212th and 213th amendments to the constitution And to the unceasing vigilance of the agents of the united states handicapper general And so and so the handicapper general worked as follows Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts But george George while his intelligence was way above normal He had a little mental handicap radio in his ear put there by the government He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter Every 20 seconds or so the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like george from taking unfair advantage of their brains And and and then I finally quote mary rothbard after this Is saying the reason why writers like this sort of uh spoof egalitarianism and forced equality And make it sound like a nightmarish thing is because it is a nightmarish thing And rothbard wrote when the implications of such a world are fully spelled out We recognize that such a world and such attempts are profoundly anti human being anti human in the deepest sense The egalitarian goal is therefore evil and any attempts in a direction of such a goal must be considered as evil as well and And so the government's always fail To do anything but make everybody equally miserable under socialism But the political elites and their supporters in the so-called private sector always do very well For example, you can read in new york times in a wall street journal today That the wealthiest person in venezuela Where where upper middle class people are rooting through garbage in the streets looking for food the wealthiest person in the country Is the 35 year old daughter of the late hugo chevez Who uh who is worth reportedly four point two billion dollars Even though she never ran a business or had a job as far as I know The former treasury minister of venezuela is reportedly worth 11 billion dollars Even though he was in the same situation I'm sure he didn't create 11 billion dollars of value for anybody or any value at all They just stole the money and so In the latest uh big long new york times article about venezuela that I read There were about 10 pages of pictures of all these awful pictures of the the poor people scrounging for food and things like that Uh, but and at the same time there were pictures of uh, hugo chevez's political pals all joining country clubs the caracas country club where it would cost like the equivalent of $70,000 to join and and they're just having a good old time Because uh, you know, that's what socialism does. There's a it's always been like it was true in russia True in africa india wherever it is. It has been you've got a grotesque inequality Uh, look at all the latin american countries. You've got this elite at the top It lives high on the hog and then everybody else. There's no middle class everybody else in the lower class. That's the model Okay, uh, you know your classmates and your roommates and you go back to college should know that uh Your your professors who always take the moral high road by touting socialism and criticizing markets Are are associating themselves with an ideology that is responsible for the worst crimes in all of human history That there's a book called the black book of communism That you can read about these crimes in there's another read a book called death by government by rj rummel And write that one down. It's not easy to spell rj rummel He also has a website. You can just google uh death by government. What a depressing career that must have been He spent his whole career Calculating how many people were murdered by their own governments in the in throughout the world And uh, and he has this huge website several books about it And just to give you some idea of the magnitude of this The next time one of your professors takes the moral high road and goes, uh, you know In promoting socialism and the russians murdered 20 million of their own people These are not war deaths. These are these are murders of dissenters to socialism China 60 million vietnam 1 million north korea 2 million cambodia 2 million Eastern europe a million They were pretty good in eastern europe latin america america 150 000 africa 1.7 million And uh, rummel calls this demo side It's a death by government and uh, and so And I also had one big long paragraph that I quoted from one of these studies Of sort of the methods of torture that were also used to Against dissenters And so that's something that nobody knows. I I gave some of my students this I teach a course called capitalism and its critics And I have them read some of the bad guy stuff I have them read the communist manifesto and then Then parts of socialism by mises and you go back and forth like that And I gave them a table from rj rummel's book to let them know about this and then and a couple of these Guys were in the college republicans and they had one of these days where all the all the clubs on campus had a little booth On the quad and they hand out literature or something or sell cupcakes or whatever they do And uh, and of all the things they were given out my handout of the you know death by government handout To all the students who are walking by instead of handing out selling cookies or something like that And and they told me that nobody knew anything about this other classmates do anything about this You know, they thought they thought there was uh, communists were all like bernie sanders, you know You know cute little grandfather types, you know, grand that you see at christmas. That's uh, there's such big sweetie pies And so I don't know how much uh Progress they made there, but that's what they did I must I guess i'm on point number uh seven is uh fascism is a form of socialism You know one of the most evil words in the english language fascism Hyatt called it a violent anti-capitalistic attack fascism After all the nazis were uh, were the national socialist german workers party That's what that national socialism is what nazi stood for and uh, so hitler called himself a socialist Uh, you know the fascism was just a a version of socialism was national socialism The russians called themselves international socialists and by the way, they didn't call their government communists they called it the union of soviet socialist republics They didn't call it the union of soviet communist republics communism was the utopian ideal of marks Of carl marx that they they hoped to reach someday when their vana would be attained But in the meantime, they're all socialists and uh, when when the soviet union finally imploded gorbachev was going michael gorbachev was going to lithuania and And estonia and all these you know the uh possessions of the of the soviet union and he was telling them Go ahead and do whatever you want as long as it's consistent with socialism He didn't say consistent with communism. He said socialism. So they always consider themselves socialists not communists We call them communists in this country and the fascists all came from communism. For example, I quote, uh musulini here And so my critics will probably say don't read his book He quotes musulini, you know as a you know the implication being I quote him favorably, which uh, which I don't I also quote hitler in this book too um, here's something just one short quote from musulini and and uh His book fascism doctrine and institutions. I read his autobiography By the way, and musulini was once a he had a phd in philosophy political philosophy And he wrote an autobiography And it's kind of like if you gave a class of third graders the assignment to write an autobiography and put a title on it His the title he chose is my autobiography by by bonito musulini How imaginative you know phd and political philosophy and my autobiography so But this book of fascism The fascists knew who the enemy was the enemy was classical liberalism. That was the enemy. It was adam smith john lock You know all the all the all the early 20th century libertarians In in political philosophy and economics Here's what he said the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the state and accepts the individual Only in so far as his interests coincide with the state It is opposed to classical liberalism. He literally said that which denied the state in the name of the individual Okay, so the opposed in particular. I have another long quote in there from one of uh, uh, musulini's uh theorists fascist theorists Who goes on and on? Denigrating what he called english liberalism English liberalism. What is that adam smith john lock? Uh, you know the whole philosophy of the um via scottish enlightenment That is a big part of liberalism And if you read uh, misi's book liberalism You'll find that the fascist like musulini that I quote here and and his other theorists fascist theorists They they very harshly criticize every element of what how misi's defines liberalism classical Liberalism in in uh in his book liberal liberalism, which is online by the way You could probably buy it out here in the bookstore But it's also online on on misi's.org. You can find it and so and so fascism always was a form of socialism Uh, if you look at what the german fascists did they nationalized about half of all german industry And the other half was so heavily regulated and controlled so that it operated for the state and not the individual That hayek wrote and wrote to serfdom that they sort of de facto nationalized the whole industry of industry All of german industry even though they had ostensibly private ownership of some of it It was so heavily controlled you had to produce what what uh, the nazis told you to produce and how to produce it And who to sell it to and and so on and so it was de facto nationalization And so how that ever came to be construed as capitalism You know, it's not really a wonder They lie, you know, they lied about it. It was nothing. He's nothing nothing capitalistic at all about as a violent attack on a violent anti-capitalistic attack as hayek said Point number eight that i'm making the book is a socialist welfare harms the poor You're probably all familiar with the incentive effect of welfare payments. I'll give you one anecdote Uh, the kato institute did this study where they they picked out seven popular welfare pro federal welfare programs out of 126 just seven out of 126 and asked the question Well, uh, how much money is that state by state? And in the highest state, hawaii, it's 49 thousand dollars In the in the lowest welfare state, mississippi, it's 18 thousand dollars So in hawaii, that means if you're on welfare and you get $49,000 in money and in-kind benefits from the government for not for not working If you want to get off welfare, you'd need a job that would pay you what about 65 70 thousand dollars before taxes to make to get just to break even And so that's a pretty big incentive not to get off welfare And in mississippi, which has a much lower cost of living If you can make 18 000 by doing nothing Well, you'd have to make uh, you know Maybe 25 30 000 and if you have if you're a high school dropout or you you know have little skill That's going to be darn tough to get someone to pay you that kind of money So why would you ever do that especially if you have to have children? Well, why would you ever do that and and try it and so a lot of people don't so there's the work incentive effect There's a family breakup effect of Of welfare that has eliminated the stigma that once existed That men had when they abandoned their children And so as long as they get a government check that can let the mother and the children at least survive and get along It eliminated has eliminated the the stigma of that So there's been a 400 increase in out of wedlock birth since 1960 in the united states And I cite literature the research that shows, you know, some of the effects of that or The children, you know, we all know single mothers that have done a great job raising their children But in general, uh, the research says that uh, that such children or the girls are twice as likely To have out of wedlock children themselves, which could You know, since they're in poverty to begin with a lot of them Can make it very tough for them ever to get out of poverty and the boys are three times more likely to be involved in crime And in families like this and then those are just two of the Statistics that I threw out in the book and I also talk about the crowding unaffect of the welfare estate That displaces private charitable efforts that are usually much more effective in helping people who need help than government bureaucracies are and so, uh So that's point number eight about how the social well the the welfare estate actually harms the poor But it puts them right where the politicians want them as dependent on them To be you know, and the more the better the more the better Let's see. I have time for a can I might I get get through a couple of these point number nine Is uh, the progressive income tax is is social poison I would call it And again, you've you've all heard of the the the uh, probably the incentive effects of the progressive income tax That imposes progressively higher tax rates on the more productive people So the idea is to tax the more productive people in society Who earn who therefore are in higher income at a higher rate? And then use the money and to subsidize less productive or unproductive people and we're not talking about disabled people here We're talking about able-bodied Less productive people and that's called tax fairness That's that that's called tax fairness Take robbing robbing people who work hard and so forth So we have we have the phenomenon of the entrepreneur Who goes broke three or four times trying to become a successful business person and finally hits upon Uh a good product that that it succeeds and he makes a lot of money And so we what do we want to do with him? We want to tax his pants off We want to put him in the you know the 70 percent marginal tax bracket if we could someday And so or the or the novelist who writes three or four or five novels and makes no money and finally hits writes a tom clancy novel Okay, let's tax the daylights out of that person And I can I will never forget Years ago when I was at george george mason Uh, we had a guest lecturer from sweden I'll never forget this Female novelist from sweden who was who we were told was one of the most better known Novelists in sweden at the time and she had just moved to the united states And one of the faculty members there knew her somehow and brought her to to the economics department to give a talk And her talk Was that the the main reason she was moving to the united states is that she finally succeeded You know she struggled for years and didn't sell many and finally she had a couple of novels There were big sellers and her tax rate was 110 So if she made a hundred grand on a novel she owed a hundred and ten thousand dollars in tax And that's why she was living in fairfax virginia at the time We don't have anything like that in this country, but that's You know that's sort of the end game of the of what where progressive incomes taxation takes you But the most insidious part of the income tax in general I quote frank charter off who wrote this great book the income tax root of all evil Which is for sale out here. It's also online Charter of That when we adopted the income tax the government basically said We now own all of your income They nationalize income and we will tell you how much of your income You can keep by setting the tax rate So the income was nationalized and the federal government got a gigantic new Source of income, you know, there was no income tax in the original constitution And so what did that do that led to a tremendous centralization of power Because now the government had all this income a charter off rights for example during the civil war there was a lot of There's a lot of a lot of soldiers in the in the u.s. Army went a wall or or you know You know just what is left left the army, but Lincoln did not have the resources to hunt them down But the charter off rights, but after the income tax the u.s. Government does have the the resources to hunt down You know people who You know leave the army and things like that They also have the resources to bribe a lot of people giving them government grants and threatening the withdrawal of the grants If they don't behave in the way the government wants them to behave and that includes the state of local governments And so a charter off sees the income tax is something There was sort of the final nail in a coffin of american federalism or states rights And that it created this this tremendous centralization of power in the central government And centralized power is always the enemy of freedom And so and I so I look at the the income tax the progressive income tax much more broadly than just sort of the minor economic Work incentive effect at the income tax Okay, I had one more thing here But I think I'm going to quit at that point because I'm going to I'm going to raffle off a couple of books To by asking whoever is the first to ask to answer the question I will give a free book and it's kind of like on jeopardy, you know So you have to have your hand ready to go up real fast and answer the Um the first question to me you may or not know these. I don't know what I'll ask you What year was the road to serfdom published? You know, I think you had your hand up 1944 Right, you get a book. Okay Okay Okay Who was ludwig lachman? Nobody knows that That's not good enough. Okay, you got to be gonna have a book. Okay Where did charles barkley play college basketball, I think you had your hand up first Auburn university, okay Okay, well, that's it for now. That's my last book. I'm gonna give away you have to buy him if you want one