Dr. Arthur Laffer | The Future of Economics

31:07We're going to reward you. I'm going to give you a little bonus. We're going to cut that tax rate from 77%. to 73%. You're welcome. That's what we did. So from 1919, 1920, and 1921, the highest marginal income tax rate was 73%. Yeah. We got a big battle going on politically. The haves versus... Woodrow Wilson's hand-picked candidate It was a guy named from Ohio, my home state. He was the governor of Ohio. And he chose his running mate, who was the number two at the Department of Defense, named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the vice president of the Democratic Party. And the Republicans picked this guy named Warren G.

32:20Hart. And he picked his running mate, Calvin Coolidge. They ran on a return to normalcy. Now, Cox and Roosevelt ran on keeping the tax rates high and paying off the wartime debt. Harding and Coolidge ran on cutting tax rates, a return to normalcy, cutting those tax rates back to where they were pre-war, pre-pandemic. The biggest election in U.S. history, the Republicans won, were just... Yeah. They just wiped the floor with Cox and Roosevelt, and they were able to reduce the highest tax rate from 73 % to 25%. Now, that took them a couple of years. the biggest post-World War I depression crash at Seoul, they got that tax rate down to 25%.

33:15What happened? Tax receipts up. Oh, no, but it was called the Roaring Twenties. We had the greatest period of prosperity in this history. We had 11 years of sewer surpluses. The price actually declined. What did the Brits do? What did the Germans do? What did the froggy froggy French do? They did it the other way. They just kept the tax rates from World War I. And you had the worst depression collapse ever. But we had the greatest boom of all time. Yeah, but you also had the Great Depression in 2019, right? No, no. I'm taking a walking step. Okay. Please let me do that. Okay, so this isn't your usual ad read.

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34:44Also the depression of 2019, right? No, no. Taking a walking step by step. Please let me do that. Because you've got to learn from history. You must. We have all the tax returns. Every one of them. we know the last guy in the top 1%. We know the first guy in the bottom 99%. I'm sorry, I'm Monsieur Piketty, I'm Monsieur Saez, I want to tell you how to redistribute wealth taxes and all this stuff. So in 1929, we felt really sorry for the funders. So they proposed something called the Smoot-Haldi Tariff. All right? They had the Smoot-Hawley tariff and came in and they wanted to do it there. And just a little tariff, but 1928-29, this movement of the tariff gained force, power.

35:45It got adherence all over the place in both parties. And it was the largest single tax increase on traded products in history. Really a big deal. It passed the House and the Senate in the fourth quarter of 1920. The market went from the high of all-time highs. It dropped 35 % in one quarter. It's a market crash. The bill passed both House and Senate. It went to the president, Herbert Hoover. He signed it into law on June 30th, 19...

36:27were in massive crash. The market fell to where it was 83 % of its previous high. The unemployment rate went up to as high as 20%, 25%. And what did this rocket surgeon do? We need to solidify the finances. So Ray raised the highest tax rate from 25 % to 63%. on January 1st, 1932. He lost the election. The market crashed. The unemployment rate went as high as 25%. It was downed. He lost the election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who then came into office by a landslide, by the way. He came into law office in March of 1933. First thing he did was the Bank Holiday Act. And I'll just take you through a moment.

37:27First thing he did was he confiscated all the gold in the US, illegal to own gold. Took in all the currency, all the thing, and put in paper money that time. He confiscated the gold at$20.67 an ounce in March. Six months later, in September, he devalued the dollar to$35 an ounce. It was the biggest wealth tax in US history ever. And God, we went over the cliff again, way down. You know, it was incredibly devalued the dollar, devalued the currency abroad. He then, he didn't raise taxes quite yet, but in 1937 he did. He raised the highest marginal income tax rate from 63%, which is where Hoover put it.

38:22And he raised it to 79%. We put in the Social Security tax. The crash went way down again. Yeah. And then they decided to postpone the second and the third increase in the payroll tax for Social Security. They didn't stop the income tax. They kept raising it until 1944. The highest marginal income tax rate was 94%. Every dollar you earned will let you keep six cents. Now, let me take you on through. We won the war. We had tax cuts. Robert Tapp, who used to stay in my family's home, Senator Fong, Mr. Republican, Mr. Tax Cut. He kept trying to pass these bills in the House and the Senate tax cut.

39:06Harry Truman vetoed him, vetoed him, vetoed three of them. Finally, the House and the Senate overrode his veto and dropped the highest tax rate from 94 % to 82%. We had a boom. And then we created another war. It was called the Korean War. And then we raised the tax rates back up. Oh, we need to raise money. We raised up the 91%. Eisenhower came into office. Eisenhower kept it at 91 % for the full eight years of that crappy economy. And then we finally got John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy cut the highest tax rate in America from 91 % to 70%. The lowest rate from 20 % to 14%. He cut the corporate tax from 52 % to 48%.

39:56He tried to cut it for 46%. Thank God for Barry Goldwater. Bob Dole, they kept it from going down because we need a sound budget and low deficits. That's what he did. We had the go-go 60s. We had this boom because of... We had a balanced budget, no inflation. And then think that Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and car, the largest assemblage of bipartisan ignorance ever put on planet Earth, wage and price controls, devaluation, they raised the 10 % import tax surcharge, the worst 16 years of prison. And then, and you'll start recognizing this world, And then the skies cleared. The sun shone forth on the earth.

40:53The fields turned green. The trees blossomed and bore fruit. The animals, they multiplied. The orphans were adopted. The enemies, remember, we got Ronald Reagan. Now, let me take you through Ronald Reagan a little bit, would you? If you forgive me. We cut the highest marginal income tax rate. from 70 % to 28%. Is that okay? He's a right-wing freak. Cut the highest tax. He actually let people earn money from 70 % to 28%. We raised the lowest rate from 12.5 % to 15%. We went from 14 tax brackets to two tax brackets. We cut the corporate rate from 46 % to 34%. How irresponsible. This creepy doesn't even understand.

42:02He said his elevator didn't go to the top floor. Do you know that Reagan was a racist, a fascist, a sexist? I mean, he was just, he was, he read lines that other people wrote. He was just an actor. He did that. We got rid of all the deductions, exemptions, and exclusions in the 86th Act. We dropped the lowest, the highest rate to 28%. We got rid of all these. Do you know what the vote was for the 86th Act? No. In the Senate. Bear passed. You see what I'm just describing what we actually did. How would that do today? No one would vote for it. Yeah. That day in the Senate vote for the 86 tax act was really close.

42:58Ninety seven to three. There were three senators who voted against it. Paul Simon of Illinois, that little guy with the bow tie, dumb as a stump. Trump, Levin of Michigan, I mean, creepy, creepy creep. Merkula of Montana. Those were the only three who voted against it. Tall and Pink, Bill Bradley. Yeah. He voted for it. Joe Biden. He voted for it. Teddy Kennedy. He voted for it. My dear friend, man I worked with, one of my heroes, Al Gore, he voted for it. He said it was the best bill in economics he'd ever voted for. And what happened? Got this renaissance, renaissance, this Reagan boom of incredible proportions from January 1st, 83 to June 30th, 84.

43:49U.S. real GDP grew by 12%, 8 % per annum compounded. That's Chinese growth rates. Now, I'm now coming back to you full tilt. This is my book called Taxes Have Consequences. It is the entire history of the U.S. income tax. It's all there, young man. Now, let me take you through a couple of lessons to your redistributions. Now, I'm taking you full circle. I'm bringing you back now to the beginning of our conversation. What happened? You saw we have tax rates going up, down, up, down, move, move, deduction. I mean, every single thing that possibly could happen happened. Yeah. We have data on every one of those.

44:38Every single time we've raised the highest marginal income tax rate, three things have occurred. The economy has underperformed. Tax revenues from the rich have gone down, not up. Poor. Heard. Every single time we've cut tax rates on the rich, every single time. I've gone through them all with you. Every single time we've cut tax rates to the rich, the economy is way outperformed. Tax revenues from the top 1 % of income earners have gone way up and the poor have done well. Now, I have just taken you through two things. I've taken you through an explanation of economics with the transfer theory.

45:31You now know the logic underlying this And I've then taken you through all of the data What the hell more do you want from me? It is correct logically And it comports perfectly with the data Give me science, come on, have a date Let you and I have a debate We'll do it at Claridge's there Make it for three hours with this dumb son of a gun I'm using his data Now, it is true that if you raise tax rates, income inequality goes down. Why? Income inequality does go down. The transfer theorem tells you it'll go down. Everyone's going to be poorer, but the rich are going to be poorer faster than the poorer can be poor until you finally get equality where everyone is equally poor.

46:19That is exactly what these creepazoids are teaching us. And they're all wrong. and you've just understood everything about income inequality and I dare you to go the opposite direction. Gordon Brown, how did he do in your country? Not well. No, thank you. And unfortunately... But do you think America, like historically, when you paint all that picture through, like it seems like you would almost think that America is historically a high-tax country. But it is. Right, okay. We have tried every damn socialist thing there is. And we tried the others. And you know, unfortunately, we get to choose our presidents.

47:00Yeah. You can imagine if we were Britain, we would have Nancy Pelosi as our president.

47:09God, talk about the nightmare on Elm Street. But what, because your new book, right? Written with some great people. Are you having fun? Oh yeah, well, I am enjoying the history lesson part. But this is what economics is all about, incentives. If you tax people to work and you pay people that don't work, don't be surprised if you'll find a lot of people not working. So I actually think your whole thing about the book is incentives matter, right? But that's it. That's all it is. But we don't actually talk about that enough. I talk about it all here. I know. But Sam Altman also has this great phrase about incentives are a superpower.

47:48He wants a virtuous signal. I love the poor so much. I want to make everyone poor. No. There's nothing wrong with being rich. Everyone wants... How many people in this silly country of yours buy lottery tickets? Yeah. Why do they buy a lottery ticket? Because they want to be rich. Everyone wants to be rich. Let's let them be rich. There's nothing wrong with being rich. There's something desperately wrong with being poor. Let's give the poor a chance to become rich. Please. I agree. Stop already. The aspirational class. I think Britain is at its best when its prime ministers are in tune with aspiration.

48:25You're the home of the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism is born here. And now you're the example of virtuous signaling in poverty. Help. My job here. I'm a Yank. All right. Forgive me. That's where I was born. You know my background. You ask my background. I told you my background. All that. do I have anything in my repertoire that could help you make better decisions over here? If not, I'll go home. No, look it, I'll go home. I love you dearly. I really do love you. And I enjoy Britain very much. And I look at Britain and I start crying. And I sit there and I look at it like Bobby Kennedy. I look at what's going on and I ask why.

49:10And I imagine what could happen and I ask, why not? We're at our highest tax rates for years and years. But you don't learn. You know, John F. Kennedy put it so beautifully that no American's ever made better off by pulling a fellow American down. And we're all made better off whenever any one of us is made better off. A rising tide raises all boats. There's nothing wrong with rich people. There is something very wrong with poor people. They're poor. So what do you want to do? You want to do a tax code that comports with the wishes and dreams of every Brit. You don't want to make it rich versus poor.

49:50You don't want to make it black versus white, old versus young, male versus female. You don't want to do all that stuff. You're all in the same tub together. If your tax code is not agreeable to rich people, it's a bad tax code. If your tax code is not agreeable to poor people, it's a bad tax code. If you make 10 times as much as I do, you should pay 10 times as much in taxes, not a thousand times. And if you do a thousand times, you got me going. And look it, I'm richer than you are. I can shelter my income. I can change the location of my income. I can change the timing of my income. I can change the composition of my income.

50:37I can change the volume of my income. I have the means to hire the lawyers, the accountants, the deferred income specialists, the favor. I can buy more politicians. So when you get these people who are anti-rich, they're really anti-IQs. The rich are what we all want to be. And the dream is to have a low rate, broad-based flat tax, spending restraint, sound money, Minimal regulations, free trade, and then get the hell out of the way and let the poor people become rich. Please. Why did Reagan get this more than anyone else? He didn't at first. He learned. I've known Reagan since he was a young man.

51:18Joking. My God, the reason I was so close to Reagan, again, goes back to the beginning of our conversation. I'm privileged. My godfather happened to be Ronald Reagan's best friend, a man named Justin. And I tell everyone the reason I was chosen by Reagan is he had a big stage full of economists. And he said, I'll take the little short fat one over there. That's not true. I got my job because of privilege. It's so much nicer getting that job with privilege than actually. But I was involved with my first publication was in the first economic report of the governor of the state of California, when he was the single worst governor the U.S.

51:56had ever had. he raised the income tax rate from nine percent to 11 and a half he raised the corporate rate he and he learned from his mistakes i used to talk to him afterwards you know sir when you were governor arthur i know i was not a good governor but at least i was better than those other damn governors at least i learned from my mistakes they didn't even love and so this man evolved he was not born in a manger by god's light shining down on him he was a normal human being and a very wonderful, lovely one. And he learned to read his Reagan in his own hand, how he learned from him. He said, I did this and it didn't work.

52:36I did that and it didn't work. He was head of a union that had called the most vicious nationwide strikes ever. He understood what it was like to be a union leader and do the wrong thing. So that when the air traffic controllers struck against the people of America, he fired them. But you know something? Did you know that they were the only that endorsed him in the primary? Or did you know that they were the only union that endorsed him in the general election? Yet in spite of that, he let logic run his emotions. And he said, look, I love you guys. Thank you for endorsing me. I do. But this is the wrong thing to do.

53:17And if you don't come back to work, I'm firing you. That's what a great man does. That's what a Donald Trump does. Donald Trump isn't the pollster in chief. He's the CEO of the U.S. If you think everyone in the White House loves him, you're crazy. Not many people like CEOs. He doesn't ask his staff, what should I do? He tells his staff what we're going to do. And then he says, get it done. Let's talk about Trump, right? Let's talk about Trump. Because he's the modern, you know, it's incredible. He's the modern Ronald Reagan. Only it's a different style. But that's all. But how is his style different?

54:00Well, he's gruff. I mean, Reagan, all of them get angry at me, of course, because I'm prodding them all. You can tell who I am now. You've learned who I am now, unfortunately. You'll never invite me back. But when Ronald Reagan would get angry at me, he said, Arthur. Arthur? Reagan throws sandwiches against walls. Reagan, you hear his patois, his feet, just a different style. Yeah. Same man. Now, everyone in the Reagan kitchen cabin, including my godfather, was Donald Trump. Yeah. But Ronald Reagan was a gentleman. Ronald Reagan is, Donald Trump is also a gentleman. He's a very elegant man. And if you were in the Oval Office today, the redecoration he's done is phenomenal.

54:49It's really class. He's from a long line of very successful people, privileged people, and very much my background, Scott's Irish and German. We all went to the same prep school, the same Ivy League. I went to a couple better than any of them. And if you look at it, he's got class, he's got dignity, he's funny as hell. And he's got a vision of what he thinks the world should look like correctly. So and so did Reagan. And they both were very are very successful at it. But you're free markets here. And then we've got. Just let me say I believe in incentives. I don't believe in free markets and cops.

55:34I'm sorry. OK. I just don't. I think there are certain areas that government really is important. and that we need to make sure that we comport ourselves in a way that's compatible with good incentives. I do believe in punishing criminals. I do believe in rewarding people who do good things. I really am very incentive-based. Most of good incentives is free market, but not all of it. I believe in a strong peace through strength. What is peace through strength? Having the strongest defense in the world so you beat the living hell out of the bad actors yeah if you have to and peace is if you decide not to be a bad actor by the way let's make a lot of money together come on let's do business what do you think he's doing in ukraine and russia what do you think he did in gaza i get that it's more the tariff that's not free market no of course not that's that's insane i'm beginning to remember americans definition of free market is slightly a different, just like...

56:34Okay, then I maybe... No, no, no, but I'd say, but just on the tariff side, right? Let's do the tariffs. Like, because you are supportive of Trump, et cetera, so I would just, yeah. I know that... I had this question before. He called me in 19... in 2019. And I've known him for a long time. Not really well, but I've known him and he knows who I am and I all the way back. And he called me in 2019. He said, Arthur, I want you to know I'm a free trader. And I said, you know, I understand that. Anyone who is a CEO of an international company is a free trader. I mean, that's their nature. They hate governments, tariffs, blah, blah, blah.

57:24I then made a comment. I said, and also anyone who imports two foreign wives has to be a free trader. He did not laugh, by the way. And he said, I am a free trader. And I said, I agree. I know that. He said, look, when I look at this world, and it's what he calls reciprocity, the U.S. was very, very nice with all these foreign countries after the war. We were not damaged like they were, whether they be combatants on our side or against us. We tried to rebuild it. We gave them all sorts of leeway on tariffs and quotas to protect domestic industries when they were first starting out and they never removed them.

58:05So when you look at the world today, the way it's evolved, all of these countries have way more tariffs against us, way more non-tariff barriers against us than we do against them. Of the large countries, we're the freest trade, large country. Now you may have the island and in Jersey Guernsey and Sark and maybe Monaco and Hong call it, but of the biggies. We are by far the freest trade country. They've got all these barriers against us. And those barriers hurt them as well as us. This is him speaking to me. They hurt themselves as much as us. And he said, you know, all they care about these people, all they care about is access to our markets.

58:43They're mercantilists. I mean, David Ricardo would be screaming about these horrible people doing all this stuff. how do I bring them to the table to negotiate free trade? Then he went on the second two points. Now, you see the reciprocity is different than the Adam Smith argument. There are two other aspects that are different. He said, you know, the Smoot-Hawley tariff took five years to pass and took a century to get rid of. I mean, it was just very cumbersome, inflexible type of democracy at work. Now we have executive orders where we can flex. I can have a tariff on you, remove it tomorrow afternoon, double it.

59:23It's a very flexible system as opposed to a very rigid system. That's a huge difference between now and back then. And the last thing is that this is a very Trumpy thing, is that it's true. There are no winners in the trade war. That's very true. but the losses aren't equal in a trade war. You know, take the U.S. and Puerto Rico is the only two countries in the world. The U.S. is 99 % of the world. Puerto Rico is 1%. If you put on tariffs and quotas, Puerto Rico's heard a lot more than the U.S. is. So there's leverage. This is leverage in them. Okay. So he says to me, he said, look, these guys, all they care about is having access to our markets and denying us the right to sell in their markets.

1:00:12They use political things all the way through on their protection, but they want to access to our... So I'm going to scare the hell out of them, Arthur. 50%, 100%, 200 % tariffs and bring them to the table and force them to negotiate free or trade deals with us. Oh, excuse me. I didn't hear what you said earlier when we brought into this discussion. Now, again, that's the explanation. Let's look at the data. He had his first term, four years. There were five major trade deals done. The USMCA, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Colombia. Those were the five deals done. Did tariffs go up or down on those five deals?

1:00:58Every single one of them went down. Each one of those was freer trade than it had been prior to that. Look at what the man does, not what he says. you know, I'm going to tell you about Donald Trump on a personal level. Don't take him literally, but do take him seriously. Don't. When he was at the G7, Ottawa, with the baby Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, I can't stand him either. I didn't like his father either. Pierre was the worst. But when he was there, he had to leave early to go to Singapore to meet with Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un has that button. Who likes nuclear war? I'm looking for someone who wants to see this Linda Ronstadt's statement.

1:01:49Who likes nuclear war? No one. So he said, no one likes nuclear war. I've got to go to Singapore to meet with this man to lower the temperature and you want me to go and I need to go. But before I leave early, and I'm sorry, I have to leave early to do this. Before I leave early, I look at the six of you. The U.S. is, this is well documented, by the way. I'm looking at the six of you, the rest of the GCEP. The U.S. is prepared right as of now to get rid of all tariffs, all quotas and non-tariff barriers if you are.

1:02:21get the shoes no you know this man is the freest trade president this is me speaking now i'm not putting words in his mouth if you want to hear what he says about himself or about me he'll he'll tell you all sorts of trash about me but the truth of this i think this man uses trade to negotiate to get peace and free trade and i think he's the best free trader ever Okay. What incentives matter? Totally. What incentivizes, in your experience, presidents and politicians? Well, there are two types of presidents. There are those which we started off with, and my people. You know, I'm not a typical academic.

1:03:01When I went at the University of Chicago, my mother came over and said to me, Arthur, do you actually socialize with these people? and i you know i remember my son coming up there one time was around halloween he said look at all the people dressed for halloween that was normal garb at the time so i'm a very different person in the academic and that's why you'll find a lot of my people the other my colleagues and i was in class of a long got better grades than they did yeah but you i know all of these people from my classes and george akaroff was in my class at yale he's married to jan and i and i got my fastest promotion to tenure at Chicago, if anyone.

1:03:40So a professor, so I'm in that community, but it is a very different cultural community than mine. And they have used their academic career to advance themselves. I use my academic career because I love economics. And it's a totally, this is takes us back to what do you, how do you teach your children to live with wealth as opposed to create wealth. And this is my calling is he had the privilege of doing whatever he wanted to do. I got all the great job offers from Goldman's, Morgan's, all of those because in the MBA and then I went over and got my PhD. I wanted to become a PhD because I love, love, love academics.

1:04:25I read physics, nonstop math, biology, geology, linguistics. I mean, And it just, I'm in love with, not because I want to use it as a tool to control your lives, because I want to understand it. It's the old one, Zion forgot. I mean, stand in awe of this. Look at your studio here. How in that? How in that? You know, it's the most amazing, wonderful thing. I didn't do it because I want to change something. I want to use it as a tool. I wanted to understand the universe, to understand physics, to understand biology. Just a, my Lord, it's awesome, dude. It is. Now, my colleagues, they wanted it to advance their careers.

1:05:09They wanted to push them out instead of getting things in. I've got Paul Krugman couldn't start a business if he had to. The only way he can take control of an economy is by stealing it through his training to run this thing. He is an iterative. Now, it is true. If some guy has a green thing hanging out of his ear and plops down on the floor and the last 7 ,000 of them died from that green thing, okay, okay. I will agree to using a tool to cut that off. Maybe we can say, but my motto in life is primum non nocere. First of all, do no harm. And second one is vis medicatrix natura, which is the healing power of nature.

1:05:54When we were in there with Reagan, don't just stand there, undo something. Don't do something. Do you see the difference between me and them? They want to get their stinking hands in there and try to control things. Use re-interest. Get your hands up. Their money should be private, just the way it was prior to 1913. We don't need nationalized currencies. That's why we have all these cryptos. It's because government-run currencies don't work. My job is, Viz, and Metacatrix, and Natura, get the government out of money. Get the government out of trying to control every person's hand and redistribute all the income.

1:06:36They're totally incompetent at that. Milton put it very beautifully. if the government took over the Sahara Desert, within five years, there'd be a shortage of sand. You know, and the truth is government is good at doing some things that it should do. And then stop already. That's this book. You can see it here in your own country. You see the meddlers, you see Gordon Brown, you see Neil Kinnick, you see Wedgwood Bend, you see all these guys, they want to get rid of all private schools. Hello. They want to control everything in your life, your toilets and your little thaw showers. I mean, you know, everything's illegal in Massachusetts.

1:07:19No, that's not how you run the world. You know, I'm different now from every other economist. You've just learned what Arthur Laffer and Laffer economics is. Yeah. Now, you may like it yeah i may not like it but you know i ain't gonna change for you not today not tomorrow not never but i do i think you touched on something there which is interesting that even sort of free marketer liberal politicians once they're in government and they have all the levers in front of them it's human nature to want to interview more now you hit the last button of mine my personal life. I was in the Nixon White House.

1:07:58George Shultz asked me to go. I didn't want to. I had a great academic career, but I went there. I had a martini for God's sake. Never had one. Never will have one again. He waved the flag. Okay, sir, I'll do the job. I was the first chief economist in the White House at 29. All right. And I was the highest ranked economist in the White House when I was 30. I was the first American to go to China in 1970 with George Schultz and John Ehrlichman on Air Force Two. They bought suits. I was doing the stuff. I was in charge of the Vietnam. And I told you about the Nixon speech. If you only change two words, mom is, and change it to is not to is, but other than that, mom, that's true.

1:08:42And I made a vow back then that I would never take a penny from any public official. So Nixon, I mean, Reagan and Trump have all asked me to do very, I don't work for government. And why don't I? Because, you know, when you work for someone, quite correctly, you have an oath of loyalty. They pay you and you serve them. That's the right way to be. And I did never wanted to be in that situation ever again. I never took a job with Reagan. I never took a job with Thatcher. I never took a job with Trump. I never took a job with Sergio de Castro, Rolf Luters, Pinochet. I never took a job with any of these other kind of reporter, any of the ones I've done the things to the states.

1:09:26I do not take money from politicians. And why do I do that? So I can be honest. I look at these people and Janet Yellen's the one I use right now, but these academic economists who I know very, very well, they will rebut arguments. they know to be true in order to curry favors with their political benefactors. I don't want to do that. When I go into Donald Trump and we talk, I tell him what I actually think is correct and what I think is supportable. I'm not the president. I say to him what I just said to you early. Look, sir, I'm here to help you make better decisions. I'm not here to make decisions.

1:10:11I'm not here to lobby for a decision or any of that. I have a body of historical experience that may be useful to you to make a better decision. And that's what I'm here for. And please, would you please kindly not tell me what you're thinking? You don't want to know what you think is right and wrong. Because then I go outside and some reporter asks me, I don't want to lie to the reporter. I don't want to know. I want to say, I don't actually know what Donald Trump thinks about this or what he does. here's his telephone you call him and see what he says to you he's shy not shy shy believe me nor was reagan and that's my view is that's my role in life and this is my final question because i know you've got to go but but what what's the what's the best most interesting question that donald trump has asked of you uh because he he learns by asking questions no no no he does ask questions but not until we've gotten way down uh for example i i was talking about medical transparency you know we have a system there you go into a hospital in the u.s and what does it cost to get a cat skin you have no idea the doctor has no i know it does just doctor wants to see one i said you know it's like going to your building site with a truck full of materials in the back what do you got i don't know what's in breaks maybe it's important i don't know what it is Is it any good?

1:11:34Don't ask me. I'm not sure. I don't know if they're any good. Do you want to buy it? Well, what's it cost? I don't know that either. Sorry, I got that. Do you want to buy it or not? Are you going to sign the line or not? That's our healthcare system. We don't know what it is we've got. We don't know how much it costs, but you've got your insurance card. And it's the stupidest, worst thing in the world. So I'm going through this example. By the time I left the office, He had just done the executive order for price care transparency. He gives me all credit for it. I got a Larry Van Horn in there.

1:12:07He writer of the Department of Health. That's Donald Trump's CEO. Now, did he ask me about the health care system? Oh, I studied the health care system. I know it. And I would describe it to him. I had been chairman of the board of Centennial Hospital for three years, which is the flagship for HCA. It's one of the top four or five in the US. I mean, it's really amazing. I know all the, there's some of those doctors you don't want to be your doctors, but you don't know the information. And they go, man, it's wonderful. No, he's got a statistical record. You know, we need transparency in healthcare.

1:12:45And so this is Donald Trump. I go in there, 501c3s, universities. universities. Why should contribution to Harvard be tax exempt? Why should their earnings be tax exempt? They shouldn't be. Why shouldn't merit pay be there for merit pay for teachers? Why shouldn't good teachers get paid more than bad teachers? Please help me. Why shouldn't student, I mean, I would vote for vouchers. I would. But it's not the right thing to do. What you want to do is reward excellence, whether it's public or private. All those kids in the top 5 % of the SAT scores, give them$15 ,000 tax-free, no questions asked.

1:13:27Second 5%, give them$7 ,500. Let's run. Believe me how this word, you come to your dad, dad, I missed the top 5 % by just one kid. Get over here, son. Grandma, teach him. You want to incentivize the system to get the rewards you like politicians. Politicians are going to die rich. Get used to it. Get used to it. What you want them to do is they're going to die rich. Let's get them rich by doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing. Put them uncommissioned. If the economy grows at 3 % per annum, you get your pay. Grows at 4 % per annum, double your pay. 5 % per annum, triple your pay. 2%, no pay.

1:14:121%, you owe us the money. You would have been paid. They'll never vote the stupid way they vote now. Make it so that their votes have, you know, when they vote, they don't bear the consequences of their own actions. Now, I use that illustratively with you, but you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. You know, and they should be allowed to do. Billy Weld, governor of Massachusetts, this one staffer found something that did it, that saved the state. Like$20 million, he gave her a$10 ,000 bonus and the courts required him to applaud back because that was illegal in Massachusetts to give a bonus to a public employee.

1:14:49Help me. Help me. You've got to do this in Britain. You need to resurrect your society. And if you don't, all your kids are going to die of bloody poverty. If not now, when? If not you, who? Jimmy. Jimmy, it's your job to do it. No, you giggle and laugh. But you see all those kids out there in this city? You're responsible for them. And this is not a joke. I've tried to make it humorous and educational with you. But it's not a joke. You have a moral obligation from God on above to make this life a better life for them. You can't virtue signal all the, oh, I love the poor so much. I want to make everyone poor.

1:15:29That's what they're saying to you. Get those people out of here and get someone in there who can show a little guts, a little Everyone knows That you'll have to lower taxes in Britain Everyone knows that Everyone knows you need deregulation Everyone knows you need freer trade Everyone knows you just need to sound the pound The pound is so bad They're going to call it the ounce You know all those problems Do something about it now Dr. Arfala Thank you, sir Thank you very much for coming on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future Brilliant We'll talk for hours more Well, I hope it may Is this what you wanted from me?

1:16:03Yes, it's very interesting Okay Although we didn't talk about AI and crypto. We don't. You know where AI and crypto are in my script. They're private markets trying to take care of government problems.

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