00:00:18.000So, America, we're one of the most rich nations in the entire world.
00:00:23.000We have countless achievements, we have huge media empires within our borders.
00:00:28.000But the health care system we have does not live up to our name.
00:00:34.000We spend 18% of our GDP on health care, and we get very little in return.
00:00:39.000When in a recent study, we placed 34th in life expectancy and we are the largest spender in healthcare by 6%.
00:00:49.000It is an outrage that we have a system that is so expensive, but we still don't get the quality that we need to actually, we don't get the quality healthcare that we deserve for spending so much money into it.
00:01:08.000It's just not right that we spend so much and really get so little.
00:01:13.000Okay, well, I don't disagree with you there that our healthcare system is broken.
00:01:16.000Where I do disagree is what is the solution to solve it?
00:01:20.000And also, you are coming from the perspective that healthcare is a right, yes?
00:01:28.000Okay, I'm hearing a lot of the Bernie Sanders talking points.
00:01:31.000Now tell me, why is healthcare a right?
00:01:33.000Well, healthcare is a right because you need it to survive.
00:01:37.000If your appendix bursts, then you need to go to the doctor and get that checked out, or you're going to die.
00:01:43.000And when you have this option where, if you want to keep on breathing, that you need this service, it should be guaranteed as a right to all people.
00:01:55.000If you are not going to be able to live if you don't get this checked out, or if you need it to be able to live a healthy life, I think you need to provide that to all human beings.
00:02:52.000Well, of course, they assist, but it's not a positive right.
00:02:55.000And the reason for this is because in our Declaration of Independence, in the spirit in which our Constitution was written, was that we had negative rights, that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:03:09.000And what negative rights mean is that we have a right essentially to be left alone, that people cannot take positive action to kill us.
00:03:16.000And the difference between positive and negative rights is that when you have positive rights, you have to infringe on other people's negative rights.
00:03:23.000So, you're looking at the American founding, and it's inspired by John Locke's Life, Liberty, and Property.
00:03:28.000Now, you're looking at health care services, food, water, all things that are necessary for life, which would be positive rights in your vision.
00:03:35.000But to deliver water, to deliver food, to deliver health care, these are services rendered.
00:03:41.000And for you to have a right to someone else's services, that in essence makes them a slave.
00:03:47.000If you are alone in a room and there's a doctor and you're sick, he has to treat you because it's your right.
00:03:52.000But does that not infringe on his negative rights to?
00:03:56.000But you will not be able to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if you're dead.
00:04:01.000And if you are not able to get things checked out in an affordable and efficient way, then what is the point of living?
00:04:09.000What is the point of living if it can be taken away so fast without having the ability to stand up and say, I need to get this checked out and I don't have the money.
00:04:25.000Because I think that 63% of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical related expenses.
00:04:33.000And I think that highlights the fact that our health care system is charging people so much that they are going bankrupt, that they are not able to support their family, and they have to become homeless.
00:04:48.000I don't think that's right for our government not to stand up and say, these people are struggling, we've got to help them out.
00:04:55.000Well, and here, I'm glad you brought that up.
00:04:57.000Now, I can't tell you what the meaning of life is, what the purpose of living is.
00:05:01.000I would point out, I would note, however, That a young idealist, similar to you, a leftist, by the name of Losev Vasarinovich Jagashvili, otherwise known as Joseph Stalin, said that if you cannot pursue happiness, he made the same argument that you just did that how could the West be the land of the free and the home of the brave?
00:05:21.000How can they pursue happiness if they don't have health care and food provided by the state?
00:05:38.000And that's something that Bastiat, Frederick Bastiat, a French economist in the 19th century, he made it a point in his book called The Law.
00:05:45.000He said that just because we object to something being done by government, classical liberals, doesn't mean we object to it being done at all.
00:05:52.000So that's why, in my opinion, our healthcare system is broken.
00:05:58.000The solution is not to get government further involved.
00:06:00.000You're looking at rising healthcare costs, and why is that?
00:06:04.000It's because 50% of all healthcare spending in this country.
00:06:06.000Is by the government, by a third party who doesn't know the needs of the patient and doesn't know the costs of the provider.
00:06:12.000So, would you then argue that it is the government's place when they've been slowly eroding one of the greatest healthcare systems in the world?
00:06:21.000Well, I think that I want to go back to your point on comparing me to Joseph Stalin.
00:06:26.000I think that that's kind of an unfair thing to say because he's a man who murdered millions, or I'm not sure the actual number, but you're comparing me to a murderer.
00:06:36.000And I think that even, I think he was doing that to.
00:06:41.000Get people to support the communist cause.
00:06:44.000But I think that we cannot let people go bankrupt for trying to take care of themselves.
00:06:51.000It is, I think it's against our best interests not to take care of our people.
00:06:59.000It's just one third of our healthcare spending is unnecessary.
00:07:05.000They're unnecessary procedures because our free market healthcare system puts profits above people.
00:07:12.000And I think that we cannot allow doctors to have.
00:07:16.000An interest as such as profit in the business of taking care of people's lives.
00:07:21.000Why do you think that we can't have profit in the business of taking care of people's lives?
00:07:25.000Why do you think that health care is different than any other industry?
00:07:28.000There's profit in providing food, there's profit in providing water.
00:07:31.000You go, and there's an example that the left likes to use of Flint, Michigan, where the government managed the water.
00:07:37.000But you look at private water, Ice Mountain, Aquafina, pure fresh water, readily available across the country.
00:07:51.000Just as good as the privatized version.
00:07:53.000The point is, however, though, that I don't think you can single out the healthcare industry as something special and above other economic and market conditions as being excluded from the profit motive, that it doesn't work there.
00:08:05.000I think the difference is that healthcare is something you need to survive.
00:08:10.000If you have, let's go back to the appendix thing, if your appendix bursts and you need to get that taken care of, they can charge you whatever they want.
00:08:19.000Because if you don't get that checked out, you're going to die.
00:08:22.000So I think that, yes, They're very similar things.
00:08:28.000But when you need it once, it is much more different because they have a lot of other expenses that can be narrowed down if we have a universal health care program.
00:08:40.000They can better negotiate on the behalf of the people, not for the behalf of the doctors who want to charge more.
00:08:48.000Now, I'm not saying all doctors want to charge more.
00:08:50.000There are many good doctors out there, but there are some that get the degree debt to them.
00:08:55.000Well, now you brought up that the government would be the best solution to apply universal health care to all the people because what?
00:09:03.000Now, the reason that health care costs have been rising in the past 50 years with Medicare and Medicaid is exactly because the government is involved too much.
00:09:13.000And this is a little diagram that Milton Friedman illustrated, and he said that the most efficient economy, the best for consumers, the best for producers, and the best for the overall health of the economy, is when consumers who know their own tastes and preferences are spending their own money for themselves.
00:09:29.000That's called spending in the first degree.
00:09:31.000In that, if you go to Juul Osco and you have a taste for an apple, say, you're going to look for the best apple for the cheapest price.
00:09:37.000And that way, that will drive costs down.
00:09:39.000You have competition in the marketplace.
00:09:41.000And overall, the maximum output will be met by the lowest price, what the market will bear according to scarce resources.
00:09:47.000Now, when you have the government involved, government bureaucrats, government sponsored insurance agencies, insurance agencies paying for the doctors, and you involve all these other third parties spending other people's money, taxpayer money, On other people, you're not going to get the best product and you're not going to get it for the cheapest price.
00:10:06.000Well, Nicholas, look at the nations in Scandinavia, in Europe.
00:10:10.000Most of them have universal health care programs.
00:10:55.000Well, you brought up Scandinavian countries, and it's interesting that you brought it up.
00:10:59.000They actually, in the Scandinavian countries, what you see in Denmark, in Sweden, in Finland, and even in Canada, is you see Thousands of people every year that leave their country to purchase health care in countries like the United States where the health care is privatized, where they can pay for better quality.
00:11:16.000What you see in places like Canada is wait times so extraordinarily high that people have died waiting to get health care.
00:11:23.000There's a famous conservative, he's on YouTube, he has a podcast called Louder with Crowder, Steven Crowder.
00:11:29.000He's from Canada, he was born and raised there, and his mom actually died waiting to get the health care that she needed.
00:11:35.000And that's why he's so conservative on this issue, because he's seen firsthand.
00:11:39.000What happens when the market is not allowed to function?
00:11:42.000Because what liberals, Bernie Sanders and many others, don't seem to understand is that there is a scarce amount of resources.
00:11:52.000And when you open it up to everybody and say everyone gets this, everyone gets that, and you go back to the different degrees of spending of government bureaucrats and insurance agencies spending other people's money, taxpayer money, on other people, constituents, what you have is highly inefficient spending.
00:12:06.000You said a third of all health care spending is unnecessary.
00:12:10.000It's because of the government, because they're not looking for the best quality product for the cheapest price.
00:12:15.000And when you have that, you have enormous waste.
00:12:17.000You look at the Veterans Association, where people are calling the suicide hotline from the Veterans Association.
00:12:24.000Or the Veterans Affairs Administration, they're calling the suicide hotline and they don't pick up.
00:12:28.000And it's because that is a socialized system in action, because they don't have enough resources to meet the demand.
00:12:34.000You cannot cancel out the laws of supply and demand because healthcare is special and everyone needs it.
00:12:39.000Well, I think we should have a two tier system a system where they have socialized healthcare, there's also private healthcare as well.
00:12:47.000Because that would allow the government to take care of the most expensive services.
00:12:52.000And then the private ones can take care of the ones that are necessary and that need.
00:12:57.000Action very fast because there will be very little wait time because it is a you spend the money and then you get the service.
00:13:04.000So I think we should have a two tier system because that would eliminate that.
00:13:08.000If people really are willing to put up that much money and to get the service now, I think it's just like Netflix.
00:13:14.000Like, you can go wait till a showing of a movie or you can watch it on Netflix.
00:13:21.000So I think that having a two tier system would be best because you get both best of both worlds.
00:13:28.000Well, the problem I think with that is two parts.
00:13:30.000One, because it's immoral, and two, because it's impractical.
00:13:33.000I think it is immoral, and James Madison said this.
00:13:35.000He said that charity will be no part of the legislative duty of this government.
00:13:39.000And what that means is that charitable organizations are encouraged in America.
00:13:43.000America was founded as a civil society based on strong civil institutions the church, the community, the local government, the town hall, and not the federal government.
00:13:53.000And that's what libertarians are opposed to number one, the management from Washington, D.C., that makes it impractical, but two, that it's immoral.
00:14:01.000Immoral, not amoral, it's immoral because to put a gun to somebody's head and demand that they give the government money so that that can subsidize someone else's health care, because that's essentially what it comes down to.
00:14:11.000Well, you're also getting health care from them in return.
00:14:33.000And we'll get to the central point here.
00:14:35.000So long as taxation is involuntary, if one cent of my paycheck is going to help someone else, and I know this is going to sound very screw gene, it's not because I'm frugal.
00:14:56.000And the reason for this, and Thomas Aquinas pointed this out in the Middle Ages, he said that, I forget the exact quote, but essentially because the money is stolen, because the government has essentially stolen it from people, saying that insofar as you don't pay your taxes, We will arrest you and throw you in jail with the police.
00:15:13.000It's stolen goods that they're redistributing.
00:15:16.000And the fruits, the way that they got the fruits of other people's labor is immoral and it makes any application of them immoral in practice.
00:15:24.000So if they're giving health care from money that they stole, that's not a moral practice.
00:15:29.000And I know Bernie Sanders is the white knight that's going to keep people from dying and he's going to capitalize on the greedy Republicans who want to keep their paycheck.
00:15:36.000But what he's doing is he's stealing money to give to other people.
00:15:40.000If you want to be charitable, Voluntary organizations.
00:15:43.000Quite frankly, I think that it is moral to allow people to go bankrupt and raise our taxes.
00:15:49.000But wait, we start in the middle of the picture.
00:17:38.000I just want to make sure that when you argue the flat tax, it's not just about simplicity, it's also about the pros and the cons that come along with it.
00:17:47.000Well, yes, no, and I'm glad that you brought that up.
00:17:50.000The reason I support the flat tax is not simplicity at all.
00:17:53.000I am not one of these people that argues based on practicality.
00:17:55.000That's the previous argument we talked about health care.
00:17:58.000And the reason that I oppose socialized medicine and progressive taxation is not because it's impractical, not because it doesn't work.
00:18:05.000I believe that morally both are corrupt progressive taxation and socialized medicine.
00:18:10.000I think flat tax is the only fair way to do it.
00:18:47.000But when you said that it produces an economic growth with the flat tax system, just to crunch some numbers real quick.
00:18:56.000There are 800,000 people in America currently who are accountants and auditors, part of the IRS and part of individual firms, you know, HR Block.
00:19:05.000And the problem with introducing that flat tax is the simplicity and the fact that you are cutting out that 800,000 people.
00:19:14.000Now, of course, you can argue, well, these people shouldn't even have a job.
00:19:20.000And I kind of disagree because part of the American economy and its growth is the fact that sometimes we put money into inefficient things.
00:19:29.000I mean, let's take a look at the military, right?
00:19:32.000We're putting a bit too much money into the military in current days.
00:19:43.000But I think that it does prove a good point as to why the progressive tax exists, as to maintain economic growth.
00:19:51.000I mean, let's look at a contemporary example Latvia, okay?
00:19:55.000Latvia introduced the flat tax in 1997 and in 2005 increased the tax to 25%, as well as in 2009 dropped it down because of economic disadvantages that came along with the flat tax.
00:20:11.000Now, every time that they changed the flat tax, there was a sudden spike in GDP.
00:20:16.000And as well as a sudden spike in tax revenue.
00:20:18.000However, if you look at it in a long run situation, every single time it went back down to a lower percentage.
00:20:25.000Now, before the flat tax, it was at about what we have right now in tax revenue, percentage wise of GDP, which is 17%.
00:20:33.000So, when you introduce the flat tax, the problem here becomes the lack of money that goes into the government and the loss of jobs in the accountant and auditor business.
00:20:46.000Which then requires a change in the economic system of America.
00:20:52.000You have 800,000 people who need to change the way that they basically work for a living.
00:20:58.000And while in the long run they can eventually adapt, but in the short run there is pain.
00:21:05.000And sometimes that pain becomes problematic.
00:21:08.000So, why I think that the progressive tax still should be existent is because of the fact that it keeps the economic stability with the American economy.
00:21:20.000Okay, well, we bounced around a lot throughout that, so I'll try to address all of your points as they came along.
00:21:26.000Now, for starters, the argument that we need a progressive tax rate to keep 800,000 accountants and IRS people employed, I think, is a little bit silly, especially when you consider that given that the top effective marginal tax rate throughout, I think, the past 60 years, people talk about this, Bernie Sanders talks about this, the top marginal tax rate under Eisenhower is 90%.
00:21:49.000However, and it's changed many times throughout history.
00:21:56.000The effective tax rate, the effective top marginal tax rate, has always leveled between 35 and 40%.
00:22:02.000Now, if you're looking at the amount of wealth that the top four or five or the top three quintiles of income earners have and how much money would be injected into the economy, they were spending, say, 40% on taxes and suddenly they got a 20% tax cut to a 20% flat tax.
00:22:20.000Even Ted Cruz talks about a 10% flat tax rate.
00:22:23.000Say, just for the sake of argument, that we had a 20% revenue neutral tax rate across the board.
00:22:29.000You're seeing that 20% of income for all the top income earners injected into the economy.
00:22:42.000They're able to save that money, to invest that money, to spend that money.
00:22:45.000And when you look at the economic growth that would result from all this new capital being freed up for the economy, For private actors in the economy to spend and save according to their own prerogatives, it far outweighs the 800,000 people that are going to lose their jobs.
00:23:00.000Now, secondly, you said that it was a good thing that we spent our money on something that's a waste.
00:23:05.000Now, I would beg to differ, and you also brought up how short term pain is problematic.
00:23:10.000These are all kind of related, and that Keynesians in general believe that there should be market inefficiencies in certain places to mitigate the business cycle, the Austrian business cycle.
00:24:47.000It's generated by a world economy that has been pumped up by fiat money and central bank policy that has lowered interest rates, that introduced quantitative easing, devalued the currency.
00:25:37.000One is debt spending, but other reasons are because they lie about the statistics.
00:25:41.000And when you address the short term pain by artificially pumping up The economy through all these measures that you want, through all these artificial and inefficient mechanisms, what you have, and I'm not saying that the economy always fixes itself, I'm saying the economy always corrects itself, and that you cannot trick supply and demand forever.
00:25:59.000That this is a grand folly, and Ludwig von Mises talked about this.
00:26:03.000He was an Austrian economist in the early 20th century.
00:26:07.000He noted something called the crack up boom, which basically says that the Austrian business cycle goes up and down and up and down, and if you leave it alone, laissez faire, you will have a linear.
00:26:19.000Very slow, very flat, stable, but you're going to have short term rises and falls.
00:26:25.000He noted, however, that if you have the involvement of the central bank and big government spending, what you induce is a much longer term boom and bust.
00:26:35.000Now we see a smaller term boom and bust cycle.
00:26:37.000You see that with the Great Recession, with the Great Depression.
00:26:39.000But what you talked about was something so significant, so severe, that once you start on the road to fiat money and once you start pumping up the economy, you embark on a boom and bust cycle so severe.
00:26:51.000It will correct itself, but it will set us back to the Stone Age.
00:26:54.000When the international finance system collapses because America defaults on our debt, or the Chinese economy implodes, or the European economy implodes, all of which are set to happen in the next 25 years if we don't change our course, we might not be able to recover because the social problems that that will induce will cause civil unrest.
00:27:14.000Now, to get back to progressive taxation in particular, I would ask you what is just about charging people that make more money a higher rate?
00:27:23.000Well, in all honesty, I believe that the justness of that is, and it's a classic argument, is the fact that the people in the lower income brackets don't make as much.
00:27:36.000And when you don't make as much, you don't have as much to spend.
00:28:40.000They owe about as much as everyone else because they make just as much money as any other person in their category, and as well as the fact that they live off of the middle class and the lower income class.
00:28:54.000What do you mean they live off of them?
00:28:56.000Well, a lot of those people in the upper classes tend to own businesses or make smart investments, and granted, they deserve a lot of money for those smart investments as well as their innovation and intuitive behavior.
00:29:08.000However, that innovation and intuitive behavior tends to work itself with the middle class's education as well as the lower income classes' blue collar work.
00:29:21.000And because of that extra labor that they survive off of, and while it's true that they do deserve a lot of money, They need to also make sure that the people that they are surviving off of, the reason why they have as much money, is also educated as well as able to continue to improve their quality of life.
00:29:47.000I don't think anyone is dependent on anybody, but I think that when you look at the middle class, they're not living off of people that make more.
00:29:58.000And not the government taking people's money through coercion is that it's voluntary exchange.
00:30:03.000So it's not about whether rich people deserve more money and it's allocated to them or it's designated to them.
00:30:08.000It's that people give them their money because they like the services that they provide.
00:30:13.000And then the argument still continues why is it that people who make more money owe anybody else more of it?
00:30:20.000And I'll point out some other statistics.
00:30:22.000The top 40% of income earners pay 106% of the taxes.
00:30:27.000The Congressional Budget Office did a study back in 2010 and they found that the top The top three fifths of people, the middle bracket, the second to top bracket, and the top bracket, they pay 106% of the taxes.
00:30:42.000The lower two brackets, the 20% and 40%, they pay negative 9% in taxes, which means that they get more money from government transfers than they pay in for taxes.
00:30:51.000So the whole argument that the rich aren't paying their fair share, even from that standpoint, it's not conducive to the facts, because the facts suggest that the rich aren't paying most of the taxes, they're paying all of the taxes, and then some.
00:31:04.000Well, you do realize that the top 60% of the population is about $50,000 a year or more.
00:31:10.000So, the fact that you're including such a broad amount of people is quite interesting that you had to include that all the way down to 50,000 because people who have less than 50,000 don't have much.
00:31:26.000And when you start to include people, there are very few instances of people in this area, since we are living in LaGrange, that survive off of less than $50,000.
00:31:39.000And I don't think you or I could imagine how much.
00:31:46.000But again, why is it right in our republic, and again, in the republic, because we're not a democracy, we're a republic, every individual is sovereign.
00:31:55.000And the point of the Declaration of the Constitution was that we have the right to the fruits of our own labor.
00:32:01.000And this goes back to the classical philosophical argument that God has given us our bodies and our faculties, and because we use our bodies and our faculties to produce goods and services, we have a right to the fruits of those.
00:32:36.000The fact of the matter is that the people who are the poorest of the poor in America have to prop up the people who are the richest of the rich.
00:32:44.000And so it's an equilibrium that the top people who make the most, now granted, do they deserve to pay as much as they do?
00:32:52.000That's a debate that honestly I have no right to debate in this.
00:32:56.000This is a flat tax versus progressive tax.
00:33:00.000But the fact of the matter is that the people at the top also need the poor to make sure that the poor live sustainable lives.
00:33:09.000If you have the poor not educated, if you have the poor not able to do the work that the rich need them to do, the rich can't make.
00:33:17.000Their fruits of labor, the products that they want to create.
00:33:21.000And part of capitalism is to make sure that everyone grows.
00:34:01.000Well, since we were talking so much about the justness of higher income tax, by the way, they pay about 24.7% on their effective, while the middle class pays about 19.5%.
00:34:27.000If you're ignoring fundamental governing principles of society, and Barack Obama said this last week in Argentina, he said, let's not talk about the principles of communism and of capitalism.
00:34:38.000The problem with that thinking is that's how you get the Soviet Union.
00:34:42.000And that sounds like a hyperbolic argument, but it's true.
00:34:45.000When you ignore the underlying principles that produce the economic prosperity that we have, which is the principles of the Declaration of Economic Freedom and Individual Freedom, That's what you get the Soviet Union.
00:34:59.000You get all these societies where they are so corrupted to the very core of how they govern, of what is right in their societies, that you have a 5% that's whatever, it's not my money, it's not right.
00:35:11.000And I'll give you the last point, we've got to wrap things up so you can close this.
00:35:15.000Well, one thing I'd like to just throw out there is that when you bring up that we have to realize the nature of humanity, and I'm just curious here, you believe that humans are naturally inherently selfish, correct?
00:35:32.000I believe that individual actors act in their self interest.
00:36:13.000When the government takes so much money to redistribute, it encourages those people.
00:36:17.000But no, see, the thing is that what I just said was that people voluntarily give their money so that they can lower their own tax rate and that they don't have to pay as much money.
00:36:28.000Now, if you make a flat tax, that effectively means that you're removing deductibles, you're removing every sort of loophole, and everyone gets 20%.
00:36:36.000Including businesses, which might I add, that affects small business growth, which is the backbone of America.
00:37:03.000The lower your flat tax is, the less income in the government, which means less education, less infrastructure.
00:37:10.000Less military spending, stuff like that.
00:37:12.000And those are all beneficial to American people.
00:37:15.000So you have to eventually increase the flat tax to a higher rate, which means you're affecting the smaller businesses that don't make as much money.
00:37:23.000But, anyways, the point that I was making before was that people act in a selfish manner to self interest.
00:37:31.000And when you remove that deductible in the flat tax, you all of a sudden remove a lot of money in that $358 billion.
00:37:40.000Now, I have no idea how many people vote because it's their religious duty or because of their moral duty, but I know that there are a lot of people who vote, or not vote, sorry about that, who they give to charity because of the fact that it gives them a lower tax rate.
00:37:57.000You want to lower your tax rate so you make more money, so you give to charity.
00:38:02.000Now, if you put a flat tax, all of a sudden, lots and lots of those billions of dollars is gone from those charities, means less jobs again.
00:38:12.000The only way you can counteract that is for the government to pump money in because those people who were once acting in self interest all of a sudden are no longer acting in the, I suppose, the moral, just way to propagate future growth of humanity.
00:38:30.000So the flat tax, while it seems really good, I think, in a broad spectrum, you have to look at the individual effects of that flat tax.
00:38:40.000And I think you have, but I think you are missing some of those key elements.
00:38:46.000Inside of the American economy that basically keep the progressive tax as an existing thing.
00:38:54.000So, the flat tax, the reason why it's never been implemented in America in the past 70 to 80 years is because it's just not necessary.