Historian Neil Ferguson explains why we may be entering the 1970s again. So we examine the evidence. Joe Biden doubles down on his attacks on his political opponents, and Donald Trump responds. And Chile averts disaster. Today s show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Thousands of my listeners have already secured their network data. Join them at ExpressVpn.com/BenShapiro to get 20% off your first month with discount code: SHAPIRO. You'll get a FREE stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint, and you'll get access to all the latest and greatest stocks, including the hottest ones on the block. If you're not a fan of the current market, you can get a great deal on a new Apple MacBook Pro, starting at just $99.99. That's right, you get a new Macbook Pro with a 128GB hard drive! You won't even have to upgrade your existing Macbook to upgrade! It'll set you up for the latest version of the latest operating system, up to date with features and operating system updates, available 24/7. You'll just have access to the latest versions of the most popular operating software and operating systems available on the market, right at your fingertips. That's all you need to get the most out of your day-to-day experience. It's free, no credit card, no fees, no broker required, no monthly fee, and no spam, just the whole world will get it all you'll ever need to be heard on the show. And it's that and more! Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on Audible and Audible Connected by clicking here. Thanks for listening and sharing your thoughts and sharing it on your social media platforms! And don't forget to tell a friend about Ben Shapiro's post it on Insta-peep it's and other places that s Ben Shapiro does it on the on it's amazing, too much of it's awesome, too can be that or he'll get it on his story on the podcast, too can do it on that's great, too he'll also tweet it on it'll be that's not just that, and he'll say it's really good, he'll really really does it, that's that's really important, right can do that, right has it, and more like that, etc. etc...
00:01:19.000Just go to PeerTalk.com, choose your plan, enter code SHAPIRO for this special offer.
00:01:23.000That's PeerTalk.com, enter code SHAPIRO, get your second month for free.
00:01:27.000For a lot of Americans, me included, what's happening right now in history, global history, American history, feels like an inflection point.
00:01:33.000It feels like we're on the precipice of something, and it's not clear exactly what we're on the precipice of.
00:01:38.000Are we on the precipice of a sort of global recovery where the West regains its strength?
00:01:42.000Are we on the precipice of a really chaotic and tumultuous time?
00:01:46.000Are we on the precipice of the 1910s, the 1930s, the 1970s?
00:01:51.000Kind of unclear what the historical precedent is.
00:01:53.000Well, historian Anil Ferguson did a fascinating interview over the last couple of days that is well worth watching.
00:02:00.000It's an interview that he did talking about the situation of the globe.
00:02:05.000Ferguson has written a number of really important books.
00:02:08.000He wrote a great book about the history of finance called The Age of Money.
00:02:11.000He has a great two-part history of the Rothschild family.
00:02:13.000He wrote books on the First World War and the Second World War.
00:02:17.000And in this interview, he explained where he thinks we are in history.
00:02:21.000And he says that he thinks that the globe is on the verge of the 1970s, that we're all sort of happy talking past the reality of the situation.
00:02:30.000The ingredients of the 1970s are already in place.
00:02:34.000The monetary and fiscal policy mistakes of last year, which set this inflation off, are very like the mistakes of the late 60s.
00:02:41.000And then, as in 1973, you get a war, except that this war is lasting much longer than the 1973 war, and so the energy shock that it's causing is actually going to be more sustained.
00:02:55.000So the question that I'm asking myself is, yeah, it looks a little bit like the 1970s, But are we sure it's not going to be worse than that?
00:03:02.000I mean, most people, when you have this conversation, kind of assume it can't be that bad, and they can't really envision double-digit inflation in the US, but we're already there with the UK.
00:03:14.000The number of countries with double-digit inflation in the world is already north of 40, and it will soon be a higher number than that.
00:03:21.000And so I asked myself, why shouldn't it be as bad as the 1970s?
00:03:27.000That was Neil Ferguson speaking to CNBC at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy.
00:03:32.000So if you look back at the history of the 1970s, what you're talking about is significant price shocks, wage controls in the United States, serious stagflation, a lot of global foreign policy turmoil, ranging from the detente that the United States actually had with China, to conflict between China and Russia, to the chaos in the Middle East, The 1970s were a very, very bad time in American history.
00:03:54.000They were then followed by the 1980s, which were a much better time in American history.
00:03:57.000But what I wonder is whether we're entering the 70s or, as Neil Ferguson says, something significantly worse.
00:04:02.000I want to quote Neil Ferguson about the lead up to World War I. This is not a suggestion that we're about to enter World War I. The conditions as we're about to see don't quite apply.
00:04:10.000But some of the factors That led to the global chaos of World War One, where everybody was sort of sanguine about how everything was going.
00:04:15.000I mean, after all, these countries aren't going to go to war.
00:04:31.000The truth is, even in 1914, if you ask most Europeans whether there is going to be a global world war, everybody was going to say no.
00:04:37.000In fact, as Ferguson talks about in his book, The War of the World, He says that if you look at the bond markets, like on the eve of World War I, even the people who had their money in the investments were saying, no, there's not going to be a war.
00:04:48.000I mean, we're going to avert this thing.
00:04:50.000He says that there are a few things that led to the sort of global conflict that you saw in World War I and World War II, does Ferguson in his book.
00:04:55.000He says this, three things seem to me necessary to explain the extreme violence of the 20th century, and in particular, why so much of it happened at certain times, notably the early 1940s and in certain places, specifically Central and Eastern Europe, Manchuria and Korea.
00:05:07.000And understand that for Ferguson, World War One and World War Two are essentially the same war that one basically bled into the other.
00:05:13.000This is how most historians see World War One and World War Two, not as two distinct wars, but essentially a European 30 years war second time around.
00:05:20.000Well, these may be summarized as ethnic conflict, economic volatility, and empires in decline.
00:05:26.000By ethnic conflict, I mean specifically the breakdown of sometimes quite far-advanced processes of assimilation.
00:05:31.000By economic volatility, I mean the frequency and amplitude of changes in the rate of economic growth, prices, interest rates, and employment, with all the associated social stresses and strains.
00:05:39.000By empires in decline, I mean the decomposition of the multinational European empires that had dominated the world at the beginning of the century, and the challenge posed to them by the emergence of new empire states in Turkey, Russia, Japan, and Germany.
00:05:49.000We should go through each of those factors because as you see, not quite to the same extent, a lot of these sort of forces are breaking loose today.
00:05:57.000So in just one second, we'll get into each of these factors that Neil Ferguson talks about with regard to the chaos of the early 20th century.
00:06:32.000They cost a fraction of what you would pay in traditional stores.
00:06:35.000They're designed to be flexible and adaptable.
00:06:37.000All-form sofas grow with the way you live.
00:06:39.000The All-form sofa collection has got everything from armchairs and loveseats to an eight-seat sectional, so you can find the perfect piece for any space.
00:06:45.000Plus, all-form sofas are shipped directly to your door.
00:06:47.000They can be assembled in just a few minutes.
00:07:12.000So ethnic conflict, this idea that there were ethnic groups that were living amongst larger ethnic groups, and that as nationalization took over for empire, you started to see extraordinary stress inside nation states about their minorities.
00:07:25.000You're seeing this happen in Europe with regard to, for example, Muslim immigration into Europe.
00:07:29.000You're starting to see this in the United States with regard to a lot of these sort of intersectional racial and ethnic tensions that you've seen rising in the United States.
00:07:36.000When it comes to economic volatility, one thing that Ferguson points out is that economic volatility that generally leads to social instability, it doesn't have to be in a context of Great Depression.
00:07:45.000It can also be in the context of just economic dislocation of radical changes in the economy that no one sees coming.
00:07:52.000So, for example, the kind of shock that we saw over the period of COVID followed by this period of severe inflation.
00:07:58.000The radical movement away from an industrialized economy in the West to a service economy in the West.
00:08:03.000All these sorts of things are major economic shocks to the system.
00:08:06.000And when you look at radical changes, objectively speaking, in economic growth rates and prices and interest rates, what you're seeing is people being whiplashed around is making people very uncomfortable and more likely to look for authoritarian figures to lead them through.
00:08:19.000And when he talks about empires in decline, and we don't tend to think of the world is filled with empires these days, but the truth is there's still a fair number of empires in the world today.
00:08:27.000In fact, you'd have to say that there are at least four empires in the world today.
00:08:31.000The United States, effectively speaking, is an empire.
00:08:33.000We may be a benevolent empire, we may be a liberal empire, but we are definitely an empire.
00:08:36.000If you see the number of places where the United States has troops, the answer is over a hundred countries.
00:08:47.000The United States is just as much of an empire in its own way, not quite the same as the British Empire where we actually had a colonial outpost in India that were actually ruling the place.
00:08:56.000But the United States is a quasi-empire, the likes of which we haven't seen since the British You have the Russian Empire.
00:09:04.000The Russians have always thought of themselves as an empire.
00:09:06.000And if you look at the vast territorial expanse of Russia and the fact that now they are attempting to take over places like Ukraine again, Vladimir Putin certainly sees himself as an imperial force.
00:09:16.000Outside of China, we like to think of China as a sort of unified country, unified bloc.
00:09:20.000If you look at the history of China, there's always been Interethnic conflict in China, a lot of tribes in China.
00:09:26.000The Chinese empire is extraordinarily expansive.
00:09:28.000And then the EU is effectively an empire.
00:09:31.000We can talk about the fact that the European continent has a bunch of independent nations that are no longer at war with each other.
00:09:36.000But the simple fact is that the EU overall, as a trading bloc, as an economic bloc, and as a polity, because people tend to work in concert inside the EU, that's effectively an empire on its own.
00:09:46.000Now, these are not colonialist empires the same way we had at the In the late 19th century, early 20th century, you don't see, for example, colonial outposts in Africa.
00:09:54.000You don't see, as I say, European outposts in India.
00:09:57.000But the idea that you have these broad, expansive, powerful countries with reach beyond their own borders, There's no question that that exists.
00:10:06.000And right now, you are starting to see the weakening of these various empires.
00:10:10.000And what replaces them is not quite clear at this point.
00:10:13.000There's been a lot of talk in the United States about the possibility of, for example, civil war.
00:10:17.000The possibility of people breaking apart.
00:10:19.000At the very least, the possibility that the states become significantly more powerful and the federal government become significantly weaker as Americans have less and less in common.
00:10:26.000You see in the EU with Brexit, you see with the inability to actually foster a common economic system because Greece doesn't operate the same way as Germany.
00:10:33.000You've seen nationalist stressors against the EU's sort of economic empire.
00:10:38.000In China, there's significant stresses inside the Chinese government, which we'll talk about in just a second.
00:10:43.000And obviously in Russia, we see a dramatically weak economy, bad demographics, and extraordinarily aggressive foreign policy.
00:10:49.000So in other words, a lot of the forces that tend to militate in favor of global conflict are in play.
00:10:55.000And I think it's worthwhile to look at some of the areas of danger, where it looks like not just economic breakdown and And global economic discontent, which tends to lead again to the rise of authoritarian leaders, both right and left.
00:11:09.000But it's important also to look at the comparative power structure of the globe.
00:11:13.000When we get closer to economic parity, for example, between one empire and another, sometimes that tends to raise the risk of conflict.
00:11:23.000When one empire goes to sleep, which was the story with the British empire in the late 19th century, early 20th century.
00:11:30.000There are a couple of ways that you stumble yourself into war.
00:11:32.000One is you have an ambitious country that's attempting to take over for another country, to supplant another country, which is sort of what happened with Germany in World War I and World War II.
00:11:41.000The second way, and usually these are combined, is that the dominant empire goes to sleep at the switch, and this incentivizes challenging countries to actually go for it.
00:11:50.000Just as you would see in a pack of primates where the alpha is challenged, this tends to happen in global politics as well.
00:11:57.000So I want to look at a couple of factors here to kind of assess where we are historically speaking.
00:12:02.000I want to look at GDP by country so we can see where we are vis-a-vis historical precedent and military spending by country.
00:12:08.000Because the truth is that when we talk about global economic power, we talk about global hegemony for the United States, everything is comparative.
00:12:24.000This is why when we talk about the economics of the United States, I have always said and will continue to say that economics, the economic strength of the United States is what backs our global power.
00:12:32.000And if we hamper ourselves, we hamstring ourselves, we're not doing that in a vacuum.
00:12:39.000I want to look at three critical periods in world history right now, looking at these factors, GDP by country and military spending by country.
00:12:46.000And as you can see, these two things are very connected.
00:12:50.000And when there is a challenge to the global hegemon, or at least to the leading power, what you end up seeing is war.
00:12:56.000And it's starting to look more like that than not like that these days in 2022.
00:13:02.000In just one second, I want to get into some actual stats and charts about GDP and military spending.
00:13:07.000It gives you a little bit of historical context for where we are right now.
00:13:10.000First, Speaking of where we are right now, the national average interest rate on credit cards is over 19%.
00:13:18.000So now would be a really good time to consolidate your debt.
00:13:20.000If you're looking at the future of the economy and you're a little worried, the thing you can't afford is to get behind the eight ball on that credit card debt.
00:13:25.000So why not figure out a way to get a credit card consolidation loan from Lightstream?
00:13:30.000It can help you pay off your credit cards and lock in that low fixed interest rate.
00:13:33.000Rates start at 5.73% APR with auto pay and excellent credit.
00:13:37.000Plus, the rate is fixed, so it's never going to increase over the life of the loan.
00:13:40.000You can get a loan from $5,000 to $100,000 without any fees.
00:13:43.000You can even get your money as soon as the day you apply.
00:13:45.000Lightstream thinks that people with good credit deserve a better loan experience.
00:14:08.000So the three periods we're going to look at are the period immediately preceding and then in the middle of World War I, the period immediately preceding and in the middle of World War II, and then the period from 1966 to the end of the Cold War, and then finally we'll look at the modern period.
00:14:26.000So we're going to look at three and then the modern period.
00:14:28.000So let's start by looking at the period leading up to World War I. So this is the top countries by GDP as of 1910, right before World War I.
00:14:37.000What you see is in terms of the global economy, the United States is far and away the leader in terms of GDP by country.
00:14:46.000And as you see, Germany is number two, right?
00:14:53.000And when war breaks out, the United States just leaps far ahead of the others because they are all depleting their GDP to go to war with one another.
00:14:59.000But if you go back to the beginning of this, I go back to 1910 for just one second.
00:15:03.000If you go back to 1910 for just one second, what you see here is that the British Economy is the strongest, right?
00:15:11.000You're looking because it's the British Raj and the United Kingdom, right?
00:15:14.000Places ruled by Britain are far and away the globe's largest economy.
00:15:23.000If you look at the British Raj and the United Kingdom, those combined look like the GDP of the United States.
00:15:28.000Germany, however, was larger than the United Kingdom just in pure terms of GDP.
00:15:32.000So Germany has now risen and is challenging for supremacy on the continent.
00:15:36.000Germany is far outpacing France, for example.
00:15:39.000And then when you look at the combined power of the powers that are about to go to war, you look at Germany, you look at Austria-Hungary, you look at Italy, You look at Japan.
00:15:47.000When you look at these countries, you're starting to see something that looks a lot more like parity.
00:15:51.000And so what Germany is thinking is, if I'm impoverished by one of the surrounding powers, if Austria-Hungary looks at Russia and says, I'm surrounded by an imposing power in the east, I got to go to war now because otherwise I'm going to lose the opportunity to go to war.
00:16:05.000And by the end of World War I, the only country basically left standing, economically speaking, and again, you can fast forward in time here, by the time you hit about 1919, the United States It's just blowing everybody else away because they've all ruined themselves in war.
00:16:20.000You can see that the UK, the British Raj, all of these are dropping relative to the United States.
00:16:26.000United States continues to grow during the war.
00:16:30.000By the time you hit 1916, the United States is basically doubling the next country.
00:16:35.000By the time you hit 1919, you're looking at the United States with an advantage over every other country in terms of GDP by a factor of about three.
00:16:43.000So what ends up happening here is the country that benefits is the country that stays out of it, right?
00:16:48.000The United States enters very late in the war.
00:16:50.000But the United States, again, was started as the dominant economic power.
00:16:55.000Now, if you look at military spending in that same period of time, if you look at the military spending 1910 to 1919, this is also why you see World War I breaks out, right?
00:17:04.000World War I breaks out because look at that spending in 1910.
00:17:07.000Almost sure parity between the Russians, the UK, the Germans, the United States, and France, right?
00:17:12.000They are all within just a small margin of one another.
00:17:15.000And the buildup to World War I What you will see here is that the Germans start building up pretty dramatically.
00:18:52.000All of a sudden, the United States jumps ahead because everybody else is fighting each other.
00:18:55.000By the time you hit the end of the war, the United States is so far ahead, you can't even see the other countries in the rear view mirror.
00:19:00.000The United States is just way the hell ahead because everybody else has wrecked themselves in war.
00:19:06.000The United States is now clearly the global hegemon by this point in time.
00:19:10.000Again, the United States is uniquely well placed because we are not part of the European continent, so we didn't have to get involved in that war until significantly later.
00:19:18.000But what led to the war partially is Germany thinks, okay, we got to go.
00:19:21.000Now you can see this by military spending during that same period as well.
00:19:50.000So, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is signed, and you have the Soviet Union and the Nazis on the same side, that is why Nazi Germany goes.
00:19:58.000I mean, Nazi Germany is like, okay, well, we're never going to get a better time than this.
00:21:07.000When you have a strong economy, you are capable of ramping up in times of war.
00:21:10.000By the end of the war, the United States is spending four times as much, seven times as much as the next greatest power in the UK is able to spend at high rates.
00:21:20.000By 1946, you see the Soviet Union beginning to challenge the United States.
00:21:23.000We'll get into more on where the United States stands in sort of global historical perspective with regard to economic strength and military strength in just one second.
00:21:31.000First, we pay hundreds of bucks per year to protect our homes, our cars, even our phones.
00:21:34.000Too many of us are not taking the steps we need to protect our families' finances.
00:21:37.000You need life insurance because if there is one thing that is sure in life, it is indeed death.
00:21:43.000Well, having life insurance through your job might not be enough.
00:21:46.000Most people need up to 10 times more coverage to properly provide for their families.
00:21:49.000If you leave your job, your life insurance policy doesn't even go with you.
00:21:52.000If you're worried about price, you can make it easy to compare your options from top companies with PolicyGenius.
00:21:56.000They can help you make sure you're not paying a cent more than you have to for the coverage you need.
00:21:59.000Policy Genius is an insurance marketplace that makes it easy to compare quotes from top companies like AIG and Prudential in one place in order to find your lowest price.
00:22:07.000It could save 50% or more on life insurance by comparing quotes with Policy Genius.
00:22:11.000Options start at just 17 bucks per month for $500,000 of coverage.
00:22:49.000Kind of something similar that led to World War I. A feeling that, economically speaking, there were rising powers that could challenge the global hegemon, in this case the British Empire, and a feeling that military spending was ahead of its opponents.
00:23:03.000This is the period that Neil Ferguson is talking about.
00:23:07.000He says that we're about to repeat the 1970s.
00:23:08.000So if you look again at the global chaos that took place in the 1970s, the United States is well ahead of any other country in terms of GDP in 1966.
00:23:16.000But because the United States decided that it was going to hamper itself in terms of wide, vast spending on social programs and inflationary policies, it basically undercut itself economically.
00:23:26.000You can see the United States is more than doubling The Soviet Union, which is number two, and in this particular period, the only two countries you really need to watch are the United States and the Soviet Union.
00:23:35.000So here, because this is the middle of Cold War, here is the top countries by GDP.
00:23:38.000We're going to watch this chart as it goes from 1966 to 1991.
00:24:25.000The United States, well ahead of everybody else throughout the 1980s.
00:24:30.000And this continues all the way up until 1991 when the Soviet Union drops off the map.
00:24:35.000In 1991, the Soviet Union basically ceases to exist.
00:24:37.000By 1987, the Soviet Union is below the UK, Italy, France, West Germany, in terms of its economic power.
00:24:44.000By the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, economically speaking, doesn't exist.
00:24:46.000Japan is the largest challenger to the United States.
00:24:48.000Now, if you go back and you look at the actual military spending during this period, It just shows you why the Soviet Union lost the Cold War.
00:25:03.0001966, the United States is outspending the Soviet Union by approximately 15%.
00:25:08.000As this ramps up, you're going to see the Soviet Union try to keep up with the United States despite the fact that its economy is nowhere near the economy of the United States.
00:25:21.000is jumping ahead by the late 60s because of the Vietnam War.
00:25:24.000So the United States is spending an awful lot of money in Vietnam at this particular period in time.
00:25:28.000Look at the Soviet Union now gaining on the United States as you enter the late 1960s.
00:25:31.000And this is going to continue throughout the 1970s to the point where the Soviet Union is actually spending as much as the United States, right?
00:25:40.000By 1971, the Soviet Union is now the number one military spender on planet Earth.
00:25:49.000And this is going to continue for years and years and years until you hit the 1980s.
00:25:56.000In the 1980s, the United States actually sees the Soviet Union as a wartime threat.
00:26:00.000Look how far ahead the Soviet Union is by 1977.
00:26:02.000It's spending 50% more on military than the United States is, which is kind of amazing.
00:26:09.000Again, considering that the United States economy at this point is a radical Is a radical portion ahead of the Soviet Union in terms of economic spending in terms of GDP.
00:26:36.000I mean, by this point, remember, by 1986, The United States has such a great- By 1987, the Soviet Union is spending as much money- 1988, the Soviet Union is spending as much money on the military as the United States is.
00:26:49.000And then you can see they can't keep that up, right?
00:27:40.000As you're going to see, Japan goes into an area of stagnation, it's then Germany and then China. In this particular chart, you're going to want to watch China because China is about $3 trillion in GDP and China continues to be a global threat. You'll see why China is the chief global threat to the United States here. So here is the top countries by GDP as of 2007 and moving forward.
00:28:00.000Look at China grow and the United States continues to grow, but slower than China is growing. China is about to overtake Japan in about 2009. Look at China continues to ramp up its economy.
00:28:12.000Now it's half the size of the American economy.
00:28:33.000The EU, by the way, is about $17 trillion, the combined EU.
00:28:36.000So what we have is something that looks a lot closer to parity, economically speaking, than the Russians really ever came to the United States.
00:28:46.000If we go back to those factors that we were talking about with regard to Neil Ferguson, the challenge with empires, right now there are internal challenges in, for example, the Chinese empire, and internal challenges in the West.
00:29:01.000And so the question is going to be whether the United States wishes to repeat the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, which at least has a good outcome because we just out-compete everybody.
00:29:10.000So if Neil Ferguson, what he says is right, that we're about to enter the 70s, then maybe we get an 80s coming out the other end of this.
00:29:16.000Or is this going to look more like the British Empire circa 1910 or the British Empire circa 1935?
00:29:22.000A leading economic power that basically loses its way and gets hollowed out by a competitive power, even if that competitive power, like China, goes down.
00:29:31.000Now the problem here is that China Again, they look a lot like Nazi Germany, frankly, not just because they're a fascist state that does human rights predations against its own people, but because China is, to the outward world, a strong state that has internally actually got some very serious problems and they may have to go now, right?
00:29:50.000This is the possibility of actual war.
00:29:52.000There's a really good piece over at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by a guy named Michael Pettis talking about Chinese economy.
00:29:59.000It's from April, and he talks about the fact that the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics is releasing GDP numbers that look really bad.
00:30:06.000China's GDP numbers are starting to decline.
00:30:09.000So you've started to see this radical growth in the same way that you saw German radical GDP growth leading up to World War II, for example.
00:30:15.000China had radical GDP growth, but now it looks like they're about to stall out.
00:30:18.000And the big problem for China is, again, because they are a state, they look a lot like actually the German national economy.
00:30:23.000The German Nazi economy was a state-run form of mercantilism.
00:30:28.000Basically, the government worked in concert with corporations in order to push state goals.
00:30:32.000That looks exactly like the Chinese economy these days.
00:30:35.000And China has extended itself extraordinarily in terms of debt.
00:30:39.000China's debt-to-GDP ratio is extraordinarily high.
00:30:42.000We are talking about a debt-to-GDP ratio that exceeds 250%.
00:30:45.000No one's talking about this sort of stuff because there's so many people in the West who admire the way that China runs its economy because there are a lot of people in the United States who are very much in favor of centralized power over the economy.
00:30:55.000But China has a real problem on its hands.
00:31:05.000Well, according to this piece over at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there are basically five paths China's economy could take going forward.
00:31:10.000One, China can stay on its current path, keep letting large amounts of non-productive investment continue driving the country's debt burden up indefinitely, which means economic stagnation, which means it looks like the Soviet Union in the 80s.
00:31:19.000Second, China can reduce the large amount of non-productive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with productive investment in forms like new technology, China can figure out how to actually invest properly, which would mean capitalism, which they're not going to do.
00:31:33.000Three, China can reduce the large amount of non-productive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with rising consumption, which would mean privatization of assets, meaning China could allow more of its people to have more money, so they could drive consumption, which would drive innovation.
00:31:44.000They're not going to do that, because if they allow for that sort of thing, that could create an actual nascent middle class that's a threat to it politically.
00:31:50.000Fourth, China can reduce the large amount of non-productive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with a growing trade surplus.
00:31:55.000In other words, drive up manufacturing.
00:31:57.000But the problem is that they already have a massive trade surplus.
00:31:59.000There's not that much further they can go.
00:32:00.000And finally, China can reduce the large amount of non-productive investment on which it relies to drive growth and replace it with nothing.
00:32:25.000If you are a global hegemon, the way the United States is, the same way that the United Kingdom was circa 1910, you need to spend like the United States is spending right now.
00:32:33.000We can talk all we want about Over extension of the United States, we can talk about where we need to have troops.
00:32:38.000But the fact is that if you wish to retain global peace with the United States as the as the hegemon without significant war between empires, then you're going to have to have this sort of advantage in terms of the spending.
00:33:25.000China obviously is looking for a launching point because they can't keep this up indefinitely.
00:33:32.000The great fear for China is that it looks like the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which may force it into the position of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
00:33:39.000Look at China ramp up that military spending.
00:33:40.000Now China's spending about one third of what the United States is spending and China does not have to control The United States in Europe.
00:33:48.000China doesn't have to control the United States when it comes to Africa, for example, or the Middle East.
00:33:54.000China just has to control the area around it and expand that that certain circle of power.
00:33:58.000So this is why people like Neil Ferguson are deeply worried, not just that we are heading into the 1970s, but that China could make a move on Taiwan because they basically have no choice but to do so.
00:34:06.000Meanwhile, Russia is doing the same thing.
00:34:07.000So if you're talking about a time of collapsing empires, Russia is extraordinarily economically weak.
00:34:13.000Russia is spending a lot of money on its military because Russia has no money for anything else.
00:34:16.000And that is why Russia right now has to win in Ukraine.
00:34:20.000Russia has to ramp up the energy crisis in Europe, which is why they just closed down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
00:34:28.000They have to come up with some sort of victory in Ukraine.
00:34:31.000So we are right now at a real inflection point.
00:34:34.000This does not mean, by the way, that the West has to give up.
00:34:45.000Is China going to look like Germany in the 1930s, or is it going to look like Soviet Union in the 1980s?
00:34:51.000Is the United States, Britain, Europe, are they going to look like Britain and Europe leading up to World War I, World War II, where they ramped down the military spending, where they have a lot of internal hesitancy?
00:35:00.000Or are they going to look like the United States did in the 1980s, in which they ramp up the economy and ramp up their military power?
00:35:13.000Now, I know that sounds dark, because whenever you think of a will, you think of, like, some lawyer in a room telling your descendants how your assets are to be destroyed.
00:35:35.000If something were to happen to you tomorrow, how confident are you that your belongings are going to fall into the right hands, as opposed to somebody in the government telling you where your money should go, or actually telling your family where your money should go?
00:35:46.000Will might be your only opportunity to direct important family heirlooms, financial investments, and responsibilities to the proper people in your life.
00:35:51.000Plus, it's incredibly easy and affordable with Epic Will.
00:35:54.000It only costs $119 for a single person to create a will.
00:35:57.000When you use promo code SHAPIRO, you save 10%.
00:35:59.000Go to epicwill.com, use promo code SHAPIRO, save 10% on Epic Will's complete will package.
00:36:08.000Promo code SHAPIRO to save 10% on their will package.
00:36:12.000Also, as you know, The Daily Wire continues to take ground for the conservative movement in this country.
00:36:16.000Because of this, we are rapidly expanding our team.
00:36:18.000We currently have positions open On pretty much all levels, from entry level to senior level, all based in Nashville.
00:36:23.000If you're early in your career, but you have relevant experience, you may be interested in our social media content coordinator or production coordinator positions.
00:36:30.000Daily Wire is a fast-paced environment.
00:36:44.000Okay, so we've looked at all of these historical periods, where we are, if history repeats itself, because they're comps, right?
00:36:50.000I mean, these are comparisons, so we have to see kind of what comes next.
00:36:53.000If you are the West, there are two ways in which you endanger yourself.
00:36:57.000One is that you internally weaken yourself And the other, morally, and the other is you internally weaken yourself in terms of policy.
00:37:05.000And so you saw both of these happen with the British Empire, right?
00:37:08.000If the United States' best comp is the British Empire, because the last major empire that had this sort of global reach and span was the British Empire, then you have to look back at history and see why Britain lost control of its global empire.
00:37:22.000One, obviously, is that the idea was that the British Empire was overextended.
00:37:26.000But part of it was a feeling that had set in, even by the late 19th century, that Britain was losing its way morally, that it had lost its sort of feeling of, we deserve to have a global leadership role.
00:37:37.000Rudyard Kipling, of course, much hated by the left.
00:37:39.000He had a very famous poem from 1897 called Recessional.
00:37:43.000Neil Ferguson cites Recessional as Rudyard Kipling's best poem.
00:37:47.000And here it is, and it sort of speaks, I think, to where we are in the United States today.
00:37:51.000Because if we're talking about how we stand up to global challenges, whether we maintain our global position, we have to think about what sort of values we wish to promulgate.
00:37:59.000This is why people on the right who have been pointing out that woking the military is a bad idea, or that the social values promoted by the elite class in this country are not in consonance with traditional American values, they are not wrong.
00:38:11.000And this has real ramifications for the rest of the globe.
00:38:14.000It turns out that promoting constitutional rights and promoting Judeo-Christian values is not necessarily a bad thing.
00:38:21.000That's not imperialism, that might just be decency.
00:38:24.000And if you lose that feeling, then what you're going to end up doing is destroying yourself.
00:38:28.000Here's Rudyard Kipling's poem, Recessional, from 1897, and it sort of speaks to this.
00:38:31.000It says, God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, beneath whose awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine, Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget.
00:38:43.000Fire called, our navies melt away on dune and headland sinks the fire.
00:38:47.000Low, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre.
00:38:50.000Judge of the nations, spare us yet, lest we forget.
00:38:54.000For heathen heart that puts her trust in reeking tube and iron shard, all valiant dust that builds on dust and guarding, calls not thee to guard.
00:39:00.000For frantic boast and foolish word, thy mercy on thy people, Lord.
00:39:04.000So, again, that's a shortened version of the poem.
00:39:08.000But the basic idea is when you forget God, when you forget your values, then, and you rely simply on material power, you are likely to collapse, which is, of course, what happened to the British Empire over the course of the next half century.
00:39:18.000And in material terms, what you end up with is a moral collapse followed by an actual material collapse.
00:39:25.000to 1969 and Philip Larkin has another poem called Homage to the Government and it speaks so much to what the United States is facing right now.
00:39:37.000Quote, next year we're all to bring the soldiers home for lack of money and it is all right.
00:39:41.000Places they guarded or kept orderly must guard themselves and keep themselves orderly.
00:39:45.000We want the money for ourselves at home instead of working and this is all right.
00:39:48.000It's hard to say who wanted it to happen, but now it's been decided.
00:39:51.000The places are a long way off not here, which is alright.
00:39:54.000And from what we hear, the soldiers there only made trouble happen.
00:39:56.000Next year, we shall be easier in our minds.
00:39:58.000Next year, we shall be living in a country that brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
00:40:01.000The statues will be standing in the same tree-muffled squares and look nearly the same.
00:40:05.000Our children will not know it's a different country.
00:40:07.000All we can hope to leave them now is money.
00:40:10.000So you fast forward about 70 years and there's a direct correlation between loss of the values that Rudyard Kipling is talking about in 1897, for better or for worse, and Philip Larkin talking in the 1960s about how Britain had lost its empire because it had decided to look inward.
00:40:24.000So what exactly is the United States going to do?
00:40:27.000The choice is either you see yourselves in a competitive race with other countries for global dominion, And that doesn't mean you have to own other countries, but it does mean that if you wish to retain your strength at home and not have to face down the possibility of a rising empire like China, then you'd best strengthen yourself.
00:40:43.000Or you can weaken yourself, both morally and economically.
00:40:47.000You can weaken yourself through welfare statism, the way that Philip Larkin is talking about, or you can weaken yourself morally, the way Rudyard Kipling is talking about, and you can look to your own material prosperity, which eventually degrades into this soft form of democratic social democracy that you see in Europe.
00:41:03.000It's pretty clear which way Joe Biden wants to go.
00:41:05.000The way that Joe Biden wants to go is he wishes to degrade us at home, both morally and economically.
00:41:31.000The real threat is you, if you're a person who disagrees with him.
00:41:34.000And when I say, if you're a person who disagrees with him, I really mean that.
00:41:38.000Joe Biden has labeled people who disagree with him MAGA Republicans, and then he has labeled MAGA Republicans semi-fascists who are a threat to democracy.
00:41:43.000He did that last week in one of the worst speeches I've ever seen by an American president.
00:41:46.000So he tweeted out yesterday, because yesterday was Labor Day, quote, We understand something that MAGA Republicans in Congress don't.
00:41:52.000Wall Street didn't build this country.
00:42:31.000Britain had the strongest capital markets leading up to World War I, and even between World War I and World War II, the two strongest capital markets on planet Earth were in London and New York.
00:42:37.000Those were the strongest capital markets.
00:42:51.000Labor without Wall Street means nothing.
00:42:53.000Wall Street without labor also means nothing.
00:42:55.000But to pretend that capital markets are not a massive factor, and indeed, the key driving factor behind the growth of an economy, is unbelievable stupidity.
00:43:04.000And to label people who actually understand economics the enemy of the country, which is effectively what he's doing when he says they are MAGA Republicans, It's ridiculous.
00:43:11.000Now you can treat that as normal political rhetoric.
00:43:13.000But the fact is, if you wish to see a strong America, in terms of economics, which means a strong America capable of doing what the United States, even if you're an isolationist, capable of doing what the United States did during World War I and World War II, on those charts, where suddenly you see America's economic might transformed into military might, boom, you see that chart?
00:43:31.000Where it just explodes, America's military might.
00:43:34.000If you're ripping on Wall Street, the capital markets, the possibility of innovation and investment, of course you're undermining the strength of the country, which is what Joe Biden is doing right there.
00:43:42.000His agenda is the Philip Larkin agenda.
00:43:44.000Bring the money home, redistribute it, and don't grow.
00:43:46.000Well, there are real threats to that, international threats to that.