00:00:08.000Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, one of my favorite episodes we've ever done, 10 specific ideas on how to revive the American middle class and save America.
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00:01:30.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:38.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:45.000We talk about a lot at Turning Point USA that whatever happens on college campuses will soon happen in the halls of Congress and then in corporate boardrooms.
00:02:53.000That what happens in a specific educational institution does not just stay in that educational institution, that it spreads almost like a virus all throughout the culture, that it can infect other portions that were otherwise healthy of a functioning American republic.
00:03:11.000So we talked about the decline of the church and how pastors have been involving themselves in BLM Inc. and not standing for truth.
00:03:20.000We've talked about Jerry Falwell Jr. at Liberty University and the Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty.
00:03:26.000We've talked about how we have lost the means of communicating, the activist media that has been so deceptive in their reporting of what has been going on in our country.
00:03:38.000But where I think conservatives at times do not look at the complete picture, in fact, I think it is a rather incomplete picture, is when we do not talk about how economics also play a role in socialist takeovers.
00:03:52.000If we are trying to convince ourselves that only upper middle class Malibu and Manhattan socialites or socialists and the members of that ruling class, they alone and their radical and insidious ideas can turn a country socialist, that is nonsense.
00:04:10.000Now, of course, many of them are cultural socialists.
00:04:13.000Like, oh, yeah, that kind of sounds fun.
00:04:14.000I'm sure we're racist, all these sorts of things.
00:04:16.000But they are very much not socialists at all in practicality.
00:04:19.000They live an upper middle class white liberal lifestyle.
00:04:22.000In order for a socialist revolution to take root, in order for a socialist revolution to work, yes, you need the indoctrination.
00:04:39.000And we have covered those things extensively.
00:04:41.000But what we have not talked about enough in the conservative movement, and credit to JD Vance and to Oren Cass and to Tucker Carlson for really contributing significantly to this conversation.
00:04:53.000It's how economics play into the role.
00:04:56.000Now, I'm not going to handicap either way.
00:04:58.000I'm not going to say it's 40% that way or 60% that way or 80% that way or 20% that way.
00:05:03.000I just am certain that economics, the lack of wealth in the American middle class, contributes to the lack of hope and them not being bought into the system.
00:05:15.000If you're a middle class, which Aristotle famously called the golden mean, and Aristotle argued for the importance of the middle class, he wrote extensively in his writings about how if you do not have a middle class, you will not be able to have a functioning society.
00:05:33.000Aristotle said this, and I'm going to quote, and again, if you're going to quote Aristotle, make sure you qualify it because he's a very important philosopher, but can be taken out of context in the most extreme ways, because some people say he supported slavery, which is not technically true, but that's a different podcast for a different time.
00:05:51.000So basically, when Aristotle was writing about a political community that has extremes of wealth and poverty, he said, quote, a city not of free persons, but of slaves and masters, the ones consumed by envy, the others by contempt.
00:06:06.000Nothing is further removed from affection and from a political partnership.
00:06:11.000So basically, he was talking about what happens when you have nothing but slaves and masters.
00:06:16.000What happens when two sides of the political equation grow so extreme away from each other?
00:06:21.000And I'm afraid that economically that is happening more times than not in our country.
00:06:33.000Now, I actually hold the view that they are where they are because of government, because the lack of economic freedom, not because of economic freedom, that because of a certain set of ideas that at times benefited transnational corporations and also a cultural decline contributed to the economic decline, I think all those things are true.
00:06:50.000But just to say endlessly, the middle class is doing great, the middle class is doing great, I do not think is an honest diagnosis or an honest assessment of what is happening in our country.
00:06:59.000So if we are serious about defeating socialism, if we are serious about stopping Alexandria Casio-Cortez and Rashida Talib and Elon Omar, we must ask ourselves, why is it that people are gravitating towards their movement?
00:07:13.000If you ask the average Bernie Sanders supporter, I would say that 20 to 25% of them are committed Bolsheviks.
00:07:20.000They would have been Joseph Stalin's best friend.
00:07:22.000They would have continued to push forward in Stalinistic Marxist ideology regardless of the facts in front of them.
00:07:30.000But I would say that 75% of Bernie Sanders supporters, especially younger Bernie Sanders supporters, they are supporters because they've lost faith in the system.
00:07:37.000They are supporters because they do not believe that if they work hard and play by the rules, they do not believe that their life will get materially better.
00:07:45.000Now, some people would say that this is an overemphasis on materialism.
00:07:50.000I believe that human beings in a capitalist society, which we should be, by the way, embracing private property and embracing the ideas of free enterprise, I believe that if you cannot see your wealth go up a little bit year over year and you cannot enjoy your family and what comes with that, which of course costs money and requires some form of currency, therefore you be paid for your labor, slowly but surely you're going to lose faith in that system.
00:08:15.000So it is more important than ever that we have an agenda to revive the middle class.
00:08:20.000We must have a contract with the middle class.
00:08:24.000So what makes the American middle class so different than the rest of the world is for decades, the American middle class would always be able to have what I call intergenerational stratification.
00:08:34.000It's a very complicated and probably overly complicated way to say that if you work hard and play by the rules, you and your kids will have a better life.
00:08:57.000But maybe someone who's working at a general motors facility, your kids might be able to have not just the home that they enjoyed in the suburbs of Detroit, but also maybe a home up in Patoski, Michigan.
00:09:10.000Maybe you'll be able to have not just one vacation every other year, but maybe a vacation every year.
00:09:15.000And maybe your kids after that will be able to inherit those two homes and maybe they'll be able to split the homes between the kids and maybe they'll be able to take not just one vacation, but a vacation in the winter and the summer.
00:09:27.000Now, this oversimplification of the American experience is actually how I think we need to judge success at times.
00:09:34.000I also think when you look at suicide rates going up, drug use going up, the over-commercialization of marijuana, the overindulgence in, let's just say, very dangerous drugs, and how you see the younger generation becoming more and more miserable.
00:09:48.000I think part of that, of course, is a cultural decline.
00:09:51.000But if that young person does not believe that there's any meaning at all to be found in the economic marketplace, what kind of country are we creating?
00:09:59.000And so I kind of find the golden mean, if you will, between Tucker Carlson and some people like Ben Shapiro.
00:10:05.000And I encourage you to check out our episode with Ben Shapiro.
00:10:08.000And I agree with almost everything that he says.
00:10:11.000And I agree with almost everything Tucker Carlson says.
00:10:13.000I think there's actually something in the middle of it, where you weigh the cultural and the economic together and don't say it's all because of the economic.
00:10:19.000And I'm not saying Tucker says that at all.
00:10:20.000Tucker weighs them both together, but definitely he spends more time on the economic than the cultural because I believe, I don't want to speak for the great Tucker Carlson.
00:10:28.000I think he just believes that that argument is not being articulated enough.
00:10:32.000And I think he's doing a good service by at least platforming it.
00:10:35.000And I know I was informed by him and his speeches and his books and his Fox News show on this topic.
00:10:42.000But I think that the emphasis should be on both of them equally, economics and culture.
00:10:47.000So two episodes ago, we dove deep into the cultural decline of America.
00:10:52.000Now let's dive into the economic trouble that America has.
00:10:55.000And let's put forward some ideas of how we are going to revive the middle class.
00:10:58.000We talked in the previous episode about how much debt Americans have undertaken, how much economic uncertainty the middle class has to live through.
00:11:08.000And some people are emailing me, and I hear this loudly and clearly at freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:11:13.000Well, Charlie, no one has to go into debt in America.
00:11:15.000That was a voluntary choice that they made.
00:11:18.000I am the number one advocate of personal responsibility.
00:11:22.000In fact, I articulate a worldview around the idea of personal responsibility and making good choices and knowing your life can get better and not indulging in things that make your life less prosperous.
00:11:32.000Maybe going a couple months without drinking.
00:11:41.000In fact, I believe that does not give you meaning.
00:11:43.000I think that it gets you further and further away from meaning.
00:11:45.000However, just to say that people are going into debt only because of their decisions, because they made nothing but foolish decisions, is partially true, but I also think it ignores the economic implications of in order for you to get things that generations before you got, you all of a sudden get into this culture of debt.
00:12:03.000And so that's idea number one for the revival of the American middle class.
00:12:07.000Idea number one, encourage saving early and often and offer tax benefits for the middle class.
00:12:13.000So I think that we should offer tax savings and I think we should glorify and glamorize saving, not spending.
00:12:23.000I think the way interest rates are right now is that they have an unrealistic amount of money being pumped into our system.
00:12:30.000I think that we should, I don't know the perfect number, but I know the number that we have right now where we're entertaining and thinking about going to negative interest rates, it creates a culture of debt and a culture of deficit spending, especially on the consumer side, and not a culture of saving.
00:12:45.000I think a culture of saving is one that can be very durable.
00:12:49.000I think the more a culture saves and the more a family saves, the better they will be tomorrow.
00:12:53.000In fact, Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot, that as soon as human beings realized this concept of delayed gratification, I think we have to get back to those two words in our country.
00:13:05.000Delayed gratification, what does that mean?
00:13:06.000I'm going to forego something today so I might prosper tomorrow.
00:13:51.000In fact, it makes us less likely to succeed.
00:13:54.000So those two words, delayed gratification, that I mentioned, are actually according to the Smithsonian attributes of whiteness.
00:14:02.000Now, the Smithsonian should be completely and totally defunded.
00:14:05.000They should be put in front of a congressional panel and subpoenaed for their racist ideology, where they said that saving, delayed gratification, individual initiative, believing in God, and families being together are attributes of whiteness.
00:14:20.000Now, mind you, them saying that, and that was on the African American History Museum website, which was a project of the Smithsonian, them saying that would be no different than a KKK member in the 1880s saying exactly that.
00:14:34.000I could take writings from eugenicists in 1915 that believed in white supremacy.
00:14:42.000I could take writings from members of the National Socialist Workers' Party in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and it would look very little to no different than the writings of the African American History Museum.
00:14:54.000So in a very bizarre way, maybe the American left is coming full circle, where they're actually agreeing with the most radical elements of the eugenicist culture of the early 1900s and 1930s.
00:15:07.000And to be most specific, it's the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
00:15:11.000And you can go to downtown Washington, D.C.
00:15:14.000It's right on Constitution Avenue, and you can see for yourself the racists that are running the Black History Museum.
00:15:19.000Interestingly enough, they don't have Clarence Thomas in the museum that honors black Americans.
00:15:26.000Awfully puzzling, perplexing, and in my opinion, inexcusable.
00:15:30.000And so they say that delayed gratification, those two words, they say that it is an attribute of whiteness.
00:15:37.000Well, let's just dismiss that altogether.
00:15:39.000But delayed gratification built Western society.
00:15:43.000If you didn't have delayed gratification, would you get on a boat to go all the way across the Atlantic and risk your life as a pilgrim to go start something new?
00:15:51.000That's basically the definition of delayed gratification.
00:15:54.000If you didn't believe in delayed gratification in 1620, you would have gone into the local pub or the equivalent of it of that time, and you would have got endlessly drunk and not definitely not come on the Mayflower and come all the way to the United States of America, or was then the British colonies of America.
00:16:14.000Delayed gratification built our country, delayed gratification built Western civilization.
00:16:19.000And to use an example in the black community, how about Michael Jordan?
00:16:23.000I mean, this is not just an attribute of a single skin color.
00:16:26.000I hate the hyperracialization of this, but let's use many examples.
00:17:54.000And when the lights were on and you needed Michael Jordan to perform, he would.
00:18:00.000It's because he believed in delayed gratification, which goes to my number one point of how to renew the American middle class and revive it.
00:18:07.000We need a set of public policy positions and laws that encourage and incentivize saving, not spending endlessly into debt, but a family that has $200,000 in total wealth in one year, and five years later, they'll have $270,000 in total wealth.
00:18:29.000How do we create a country that does that?
00:18:31.000You tell me the reason why we have to create money out of thin air to go continue to pay these ridiculous stimulus checks, and every Republican should be against these stimulus cash payments that are actually rigged against the middle class.
00:18:46.000Our Republican Party is espousing and is advancing a set of ideas that are against the middle class.
00:18:55.000Don't let anyone tell you that it worked.
00:18:57.000Part of PPP sort of worked, the payroll protection program, but it was ripe with fraud and was given to people that didn't need it.
00:19:05.000We at Turning Point USA rejected the money completely and categorically.
00:19:11.000But this next stimulus is just going to go give out more money to allegedly help the middle class.
00:19:16.000Well, first of all, the inflation that will ensue will destroy the American middle class.
00:19:20.000Secondly, when you just create money out of thin air to go give it to people, she asked the question, why don't they have it in the first place?
00:19:31.000The reason that politicians feel compelled to have to send this money so they don't have a revolt on their hands, it's the modern day equivalent of the Roman redistribution program to try to prevent a revolution on your hands.
00:19:44.000The reason they're doing this is because they know people have very little money in the bank or any sort of wealth at all whatsoever.
00:19:52.000So, idea number one: encourage saving early and often.
00:19:55.000For all younger listeners out there, you should be saving half of what you earn if you can.
00:20:01.000Let me say that again: you should save half of what you earn if you can.
00:20:06.000Now, if you can't, I completely understand.
00:20:07.000If you have medical obligations, if you have student loan repayment, that's fine.
00:20:11.000But force yourself to try to put half of what you earn into a saving account.
00:20:16.000And then, if you have to, take it out.
00:20:18.000But really try as hard as you can for when you're young, because when you get older and you have kids and you have obligations and you have a mortgage, it's going to get nearly impossible to save.
00:21:07.000I think that if you're not measuring everything, you're not being honest with yourself.
00:21:10.000And I think that if you're not being honest with yourself, then why even live?
00:21:14.000I think that honesty is a necessary precedent to a successful life, especially a responsible life.
00:21:23.000But if you're not able to see that you're even improving your life a little bit one year over year, materially or financially, then you're going to lose faith in the system.
00:21:32.000And so, and I'm not going to say maybe you have an emergency, maybe you splurge a little bit, maybe you go on a nice vacation.
00:21:37.000I get all those sorts of things, and you then factor them in.
00:21:40.000But for young people in particular, I implore you, save as early as you can.
00:21:44.000And I was told this advice by many business people: like, wow, I wish I would have saved more in my 20s because I could have really utilized that in the 30s and 40s.
00:21:51.000And I was presented with good business deals.
00:21:53.000I knew we're going to work, and I wish I had the capital to reallocate it.
00:21:56.000So, I highly encourage you personally to do that because we need to get away from this culture of debt.
00:22:01.000Idea number two: we need to eliminate the FICA tax for anyone earning $95,000 or less a year.
00:22:09.000So, the FICA tax is paid half by the employee and half by the employer.
00:22:36.000It gets spent, and there's not even enough money to fund our current obligations.
00:22:39.000So, why the Republican Party has not advocated as part of their policy position a permanent and absolute abolition of the FICA tax for workers, not for employers.
00:22:50.000I wish it would be for employers too, but for workers is beyond me.
00:23:53.000So if the Republican Party was serious about representing the American middle class, if we were serious about giving a stimulus, about giving representation to the American middle class, why are we cutting corporate taxes of corporations that hate our country?
00:24:06.000And we are not cutting payroll taxes for workers that are losing their country, that love their country, that are patriotic.
00:24:13.000I have been a long-term advocate of the total abolition of FICA for anyone earning less than a certain amount.
00:24:41.000But I'm a huge proponent of abolishing the FICA tax.
00:24:44.000If you're listening to this and you say, boy, I'm barely getting by and you're earning $60,000 a year.
00:24:50.000And I told you right now, like that, as I snap my fingers, $4,500 tax-free could come to you and your family, you would take that deal in an instant.
00:25:06.000And I have a much longer conversation on how to fund that.
00:25:09.000But there are other taxes that we are not totally collecting on.
00:25:12.000There are other import tariffs that I would actually recommend instituting that could help fund for Social Security and Medicare other than taxing middle-class workers.
00:25:23.000There's other ways to pay for things, especially on the higher income distribution ladder.
00:25:27.000No, I am not advocating for higher taxes for anyone.
00:25:30.000But if you gave me a choice, which of course politics is the lesser of two evils a lot of the time, you say, Charlie, would you abolish the FICA tax for anyone earning less than $95,000?
00:25:40.000And would you raise taxes 1% for anyone earning more than $950,000 a year?
00:25:46.000And if you can make the numbers work, which I'm confident you can, and many economists can do that, the fact that we do not have a grassroots movement to eliminate the FICA tax just goes to show how much the anti-American corporations have influenced the zeitgeist, which means the spirit of our times and the conversation in our country.
00:26:04.000And Social Security is not even properly funded.
00:26:07.000I think the entire Social Security model needs to be abolished and obliterated, not for current recipients, but for future recipients.
00:26:13.000And so FICA payroll taxes are among the most regressive of all U.S. federal taxes.
00:26:20.000But amazingly, it is the one part of tax, especially on the worker side, not on the employer side.
00:26:25.000Just so you know, at Turning Point USA, last year, we paid well over a million dollars in payroll taxes, okay?
00:27:30.000And most of that burden is on middle-class workers.
00:27:35.000Most of that is on people that are barely getting by, and we are taking their wages every single year.
00:27:42.000So email me your thoughts on that one, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:27:45.000I think the Republican Party has rightfully become the party of middle-class workers.
00:27:49.000It's about time we start to put forward economic policies that can benefit them.
00:27:55.000The fact that no Republicans advocate for a FICA abolition just goes to show how out of touch the ruling class is with the rest of our country.
00:28:04.000Idea number three, encourage family formation and make it easier to start and grow a family.
00:28:10.000So currently birth rates of native-born Americans are right around 1.7 below the replacement level, by the way.
00:28:17.000In many European countries, it's much lower than that.
00:28:20.000And this is, by the way, economics play a huge role in this.
00:28:23.000The reason why people don't have big families, it's because it's too expensive to have big families and we're taking their money through FICA.
00:28:30.000We need to revive the marriage culture in our country, not through government, but by empowering and rewarding those social institutions that benefit the family and parents remaining married.
00:28:39.000So for mega churches out there that are supporting BLM Inc. and sending millions of dollars to BLM so that they can destroy our country and for churches out there that are raising money for the Marxists so that they can increase the amount of abortions.
00:28:51.000Why are churches not saying any family that has a child, we're going to help pay for the bills every single month?
00:28:59.000You know, these churches continue to build their megaplexes and their multi-billion dollar institutional cash reserves.
00:29:07.000Why don't they say we're going to help pay for children?
00:29:12.000Instead of building these ridiculous monstrosities, mostly in Southern California, by the way, of which will turn to dust and turn to nothing and ruin, why not say every family that has a child in our church will receive $30 a month, $50 a month.
00:29:33.000Why won't churches help step up and do a middle-class family stimulus?
00:29:38.000It's because Christian Inc., Christian Incorporated, is much more worried about becoming Christian famous than fighting for what is right and for what is true and what is good in the world.
00:29:46.000And some churches do do this, but very, very few.
00:29:49.000And some of these good churches are Pastor Rob McCoy and Pastor Jack Hibbs do a version of this, and God bless them for that.
00:29:55.000And I will add to this, I would support some public policy around family formation.
00:30:00.000As long as the mother and father stay together, I think we need more tax credits about having more children in our country.
00:30:06.000And this is one of the reasons why we bring in so many immigrants every single year is because it's so expensive to have children in the inner cities and suburban America.
00:30:13.000So we bring in millions of people that do not share our values, do not speak our language, to try to keep our birth rate stable.
00:30:21.000Well, how about we restrict immigration, which is number five coming up in just a second, but we restrict immigration and we say we want to have bigger, more flourishing, productive American families.
00:30:34.000And that includes black families and that includes American Hispanic families.
00:30:37.000If you're an American, you should have bigger families.
00:31:17.000I mean, some people only have one kid, but it should be, I'm going to have as many kids as I financially can have because God tells me to do that.
00:31:25.000And kids are the greatest way that you can continue to contribute meaningfully to our country.
00:32:00.000But if you know the Catholic teaching on birth control, they're not exactly fans of birth control.
00:32:05.000And because of that, the Catholics contributed greatly to the American birth rate for years.
00:32:10.000And as soon as, for whatever reason, they started to use birth control, and maybe for good reasons, maybe for not.
00:32:15.000And I'll let the Catholics sort that out amongst themselves.
00:32:17.000All of a sudden, two, three kids per family.
00:32:20.000And with that, we became a more liberal society.
00:32:23.000And for Hispanics, even though they had the second highest fertility rate in the United States in 2018, the fertility rate of Hispanic women dropped by 31% from 2006, 2017.
00:32:35.000So we should have a national moonshot.
00:32:36.000We say we want to make middle-class families three to four kids per household.
00:32:42.000And the reason why a lot of people don't have kids is because it's too expensive.
00:32:45.000That goes nicely into number four.0.98
00:32:48.000We should have a national federal bill.
00:32:50.000And again, this doesn't interest corporate America, so don't expect them to mention this anytime soon.
00:32:55.000But these are all conservative, pro-growth ideas.
00:32:58.000A federal bill that says no middle-class family can pay more than 10% of their total income to sales tax, state tax, local tax, or property tax.
00:33:09.000That there is a cap on how much you as a middle-class family can actually pay in taxes outside of your federal government tax.
00:33:18.000Our current tax policy ought not merely level the playing field for married couples.
00:33:23.000We should actually tilt it in their favor.0.92
00:33:25.000We should make it easier financially for married couples to be able to advance in American society, not harder.
00:33:32.000Right now, it's easier to be single than it is to be married.
00:33:35.000The family is the core building block of a society, something that flourishes and something that functions meaningfully, something that is durable, something that can survive the Chinese coronavirus.
00:33:47.000None of the stimulus that the federal government has issued should have happened in the first place.
00:33:57.000I was against it early, and I'm against it now again.
00:33:59.000If we had strong families that saved, and if we had a tax burden that did not destroy workers and destroy entrepreneurs and small business people, we wouldn't have to send $1,000 to every single person.
00:34:12.000We wouldn't have to create $3 trillion out of thin air.
00:34:15.000We have done this because we have created bad public policy for decades.
00:34:20.000The tax burden for middle-class families, if you count property tax, state tax, local taxes, it should be capped at no more than 10% of total income.
00:34:28.000And it's far more than that for most American families.
00:34:31.000I talked to families in suburban America in Chicago, Illinois, and they're paying anywhere between 14 to 16% of their total income to state, federal, local, property, and sales tax.
00:34:42.000For example, in Chicago, Illinois, there's an 11% sales tax.
00:34:46.000In Chicago, Illinois, property taxes on a home valued $800,000 are $32,000 a year.
00:34:54.000Illinois has a 5% income tax, not to mention all the other taxes just to survive in Illinois, such as business transaction tax, such as tolls.
00:35:05.000It's anywhere between 14 and 16% before you even touch federal taxes.
00:35:09.000So before Tax in Illinois, 14% plus, let's say you're earning $200,000 a year.
00:35:18.000So you're paying about 70% of, you're paying about $70,000 of that to the federal government plus FICA.
00:35:24.000So you're talking easily, $100,000 in taxes if you're living in suburban Chicago to all sorts of levels of government before you're even able to get started.
00:35:34.000That's $100,000 a year to support a family of three or four.
00:35:40.000And things cost more in Chicago because there are more taxes.
00:35:44.000So you go out to eat to Chili's with four kids and it's $230.
00:35:49.000Because then, of course, you put 10% on that with sales tax.
00:35:52.000So we need to lessen the tax burden generally and restrict the state governments from taxing Americans as much as they are.0.85
00:36:01.000Idea number five, restrict immigration to increase wages.
00:36:06.000A record 45.8 million foreign-born people reside in our country.
00:36:11.000Immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive in the United States at an estimated rate of 1.5 million annually, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.
00:36:19.000More than one in five people living in America speaks a language other than English at home, while more than 10 speak Spanish, according to the largest, according to the latest United States Census Bureau American Community Survey.
00:36:32.000For wages to rise, immigration must fall.
00:36:39.000This is why corporate America wants an endless stream of cheap labor in our country.
00:36:43.000Even Cesar Chavez said this, who is revered by the left.
00:36:47.000Now, the big tech companies, they want an endless supply of H-1B workers to try to limit the wages of recent college graduates that studied science, technology, engineering, and math.
00:36:59.000Also, corporate America, specifically big agriculture, they want an endless stream of cheap labor to keep wages down in the agricultural sector.
00:37:07.000As Governor Christy No mentioned in our podcast a couple weeks ago in early July, when there was the immigration moratorium put forward by President Trump, which was terrific and clairvoyant and ahead of its time, considering we have 25 million people out of work, when that was signed by President Trump, every single job that was opened in South Dakota was filled by American South Dakotans that went to work for the first time in a long time.
00:37:35.000Now, according to Dan Stein, immigration expert, United States GDP in 1974 was $1.5 trillion, the equivalent of $5 trillion in today's dollars.
00:37:45.000In real terms, our current $18 trillion GDP is three times as large as it was in 1974.
00:37:50.000Yet, millions of Americans are no better off in terms of wages than they were nearly 50 years ago.
00:37:58.000Because in that same period of time, we have increased the immigrant population in the United States by at least 50 million.
00:38:06.000You need to put the logical connection for why this is.
00:38:10.000Now, mind you, to connect all this together, there is, of course, a contributing factor when you bring in 50 million people over the last 50 years to wages not going up.
00:38:38.000Email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com if that's a book that would interest you.
00:38:43.000According to the Wall Street Journal, in recent years, college degrees have become riskier, splitting graduates more widely into haves and have-nots.
00:38:50.000There are three related shifts causing economists to reexamine the returns of college.
00:38:54.000First, the wages of college graduates have remained mostly flat this century after inflation.
00:38:59.000Secondly, the cost of attending college has gone up dramatically.
00:39:03.000Third, even with higher salaries, significant numbers of college graduates in recent years are failing to build the kind of wealth that previous generations did.
00:39:11.000College and graduate school tuition has risen at triple the rate of inflation since 2000.
00:39:16.000Meanwhile, the New York Fed data shows roughly 4 in 10 recent college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27 are in jobs that typically do not require a degree.
00:39:27.000So they get a degree and yet they go, then 40% of them go in jobs that don't require a degree.
00:39:32.000Yet the highest demand in our society are people that are in HVAC, plumbers, and people in the trades.
00:39:42.000By the way, you can also start your own business in these fields and with no debt, be able to take a risk.
00:39:50.000And then if you don't succeed, there's very little downside.
00:39:53.000One of the reasons why the middle class is shrinking and one of the reasons why the middle class is in trouble is this lie that you have to go into debt or save the money that you're able to save so your kid can go to college for what?
00:40:05.000To go borrow money they don't have to study things that don't matter, to find jobs that don't exist.
00:40:10.000I am more and more convinced that higher education is one of the greatest scams in America and that I am more so than ever encouraging people not to go to college.
00:40:22.000Go find a job and go read great books and read the Bible and work harder than the person next to you, find something that you think you might enjoy and you have a skill towards and then see where God takes you.
00:41:26.000But at least prove to yourself that you need to go.
00:41:29.000So I think the presupposition with college needs to start with, I'm going to start from a default position that I'm not going, and then I need to prove to myself that I should go.
00:41:38.000So you start from a position of not going, and then go through the logical justifications of why I should go.
00:42:20.000You cannot have a market if people do not know the price of anything they are purchasing.
00:42:23.000The reason why healthcare has gone up so dramatically is that people are not able to make informed choices in the marketplace.
00:42:29.000So this bill will lower health care prices by providing healthcare and consumers with the information we need to shop for the best value before care is delivered.
00:42:37.000This will help eliminate cost drivers in the healthcare space like price gouging, resource wasting, or misallocation, over-doctoring and over-prescribing, and surprise billing.
00:42:46.000Economists believe price transparency could reduce healthcare costs by as much as 30% to 50%.
00:42:51.000Newt Gingrich has estimated that this savings would amount to as much as $11,000 a year for the average American family.
00:42:58.000181 million Americans get health care through their employer.
00:43:02.000This will save employers massive amounts of money, meaning more hiring, more wages, and more investment.
00:43:07.000Several surveys show that 90% of Americans support healthcare price transparency.
00:43:13.000Healthcare is a dominant financial concern for most middle-class Americans.
00:43:20.000And Republicans have been awful at putting forward a replacement because their corporate donors do not allow them to be able to talk clearly about health care.
00:43:30.000Healthcare price transparency is being lobbied.
00:43:50.000We do a whole podcast on that about twice a week, and we're going to continue to do it so you understand the left.
00:43:55.000What bothers me is how Republicans are not behind these very common sense ideas because they're so worried about losing reelection and they're being held hostage by their crony corporate donors.
00:44:05.000If you're taking money from the hospital lobby and you do not support the Price Transparency Act, you're a highly conflicted individual who honestly should be run out of office because you serve the interests of a small few cartel of corporate corporations and not what is best for our country.
00:44:20.000The fact that when I go to a hospital, I cannot tell how much a Bandaid costs versus a simple procedure costs and it's all secret and we'll tell you later and we'll bill your insurance company or third party paying.
00:44:32.000It is one of the most backwards, quasi-rigged systems in all of America.
00:44:40.000Idea number eight, we need to have a self-sufficiency American agenda.
00:44:44.000We need to make things here in America.
00:44:46.000Again, if you do not measure something, you're not going to be able to get to that something.
00:44:50.000We need to have a made-in-America agenda to bring back 3 million jobs in the next two years to make critical essentials here in America.
00:44:58.000We need to make vitamin C, penicillin, pharmaceuticals, steel, critical manufacturing, personal protection equipment.
00:45:08.000Anything that we are basically making in China outside of textiles should be brought to our country.
00:45:12.000And it should be done quickly through tax benefits, through re-domiciling agreements.
00:45:17.000It should be done with corporate heads and it should be done without getting McKinsey involved.
00:45:20.000And McKinsey and company is probably the best at making sure our country gets sold out to China.
00:45:26.000They are the experts at making sure the CCP is going to own the 21st century.
00:45:30.000Now, corporate America is not going to like this because corporate America generally in our country does not care about what is best for America.
00:45:38.000They care what is best for the bottom line in appeasing their Chinese puppet masters.
00:45:42.000And so this is going to have to be done outside of corporate America.
00:45:45.000And maybe a small business in Hubbard, Ohio is going to have to step up to actually make something again.
00:45:51.000Maybe there will be a small business and a manufacturing plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, a beautiful part of the country, by the way, one of my favorite parts of the country right there on the Ohio River.
00:46:01.000Maybe there is a manufacturing plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia that is going to get a call saying, hey, we need you to make vitamin C. Can you go hire 200 people?
00:46:10.000Maybe there's going to be a phone call that is made for somebody in Lebanon, Virginia.
00:46:16.000And they're going to say, hey, do you have the capacity to be able to make masks?
00:46:22.000Oh, yes, I actually have the full capacity and I have a manufacturing plant that I was going to close down.
00:46:29.000It's coming over from China and you're going to do it in a partnership with this company and you'll own the manufacturing contract.
00:46:35.000Maybe there is going to be a call made to someone in Merrillville, Tennessee, a place that has been destroyed by the deindustrialization of our country.
00:46:43.000And we've been convinced by our masters that this is the best thing ever because we have all this plastic coming in from China.
00:47:55.000And then we need the wherewithal and we need the political elite to stop pandering to transnational corporations and start serving the interests of middle America.
00:48:05.000Idea number nine, allow a parent trigger and for tax credits to be used for vouchers and private schooling.
00:48:12.000We need to be the biggest advocates for school choice and for homeschooling.
00:48:16.000If someone homeschools their kids, they should get a full refund for the money that they would have gotten to send their kid to the local public school.
00:48:23.000Service not rendered, child still needing education, you get a refund.
00:48:31.000Instead, when you homeschool your kid, you get no refund and you still fund the Marxist school down the street so that the other kids, you pay for the neighbor's kids' education, but not your own kids' education.
00:48:42.000So look, the strongest support for school vouchers come from lower income families.
00:48:48.000Vouchers allow children to attend a private school using some or all of the per-pupil spending amount allocated to the local school district.
00:48:55.000The national average for spending per pupil per school district is $13,000.
00:48:58.000Vouchers would allow parents to use that money for private schools or religious schools.
00:49:03.000Interestingly enough, the oldest voucher system in the entire country was Vermont, which started in 1869.
00:49:10.000And now that state's darling socialist senator doesn't even support it.
00:49:14.000And the two groups that support school vouchers the most, poor people and black people.
00:49:19.000The people who oppose school vouchers the most, rich white people, rich racist white people like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
00:49:28.000Too many Americans are stuck in failing school districts hijacked by public sector cartel teacher unions that are among the most radical unions in the country.
00:49:39.000We need the ability for middle-class families to have the money follow the child and to be able to properly invest and see where their money is going in education.
00:49:48.000Idea number 10, and the final idea, these are all Charlie Kirk originals, and I've taken some from friends of mine, Cynthia Fisher, and self-sufficiency from Chris Buzzkirk, but I put together the list.
00:49:57.000And I think, by the way, if the Republican Party, if Donald Trump ran on these 10 ideas, we would win against Joe Biden in a landslide.
00:50:04.000It wouldn't be even close because these are real, tangible ideas that could benefit the American people.
00:50:14.000Why don't we have a self-sufficiency agenda?
00:50:16.000Well, it's because, again, I've said this in prior podcasts.
00:50:19.000The Republican Party is bought by corporate interests.
00:50:22.000And campaign finance is one of the main reasons as to why we have seen the decline of America.
00:50:27.000So idea number 10, put every dollar of federal spending online in real time.
00:50:31.000A majority of people do not trust their government, which is correct and a good thing, but they trust it even less because there's no transparency.
00:50:38.000So every single dollar the federal government spends, no different than those of you that work for a company, you have to put up a expense report.
00:50:45.000The federal government should be required by law within 24 hours to put up an expense report at every single transaction.
00:50:52.000Someone at the Treasury Department goes out to a nice steak dinner.
00:51:07.000You need a Department of Transparency, not a new federal cabinet, but you need a czar of transparency that puts every single dollar of federal spending online in real time.
00:51:15.000If I walked through with you what we spend money on, we spend money on treadmills for shrimp.
00:51:21.000We spend money on natural gas gas stations in Afghanistan where there are no natural gas cars.
00:51:27.000We spent $400 million on a hotel in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan that ended up having to be abolished because it actually allowed being safe harbor for terrorists.
00:51:35.000The elites in both parties do not want transparency because it actually might show how utterly corrupt that they are.
00:51:41.000Every dollar of federal spending online in real time.
00:51:44.000So these 10 ideas, let's recap them really quick.
00:51:47.000Encourage saving early and often, a culture of saving and also through public policy.
00:51:51.000Eliminate the FICA tax for anyone that earns less than $95,000 a year, which would be a 7.65% raise for every middle-class family.
00:52:01.000Encourage family formation to make it easier to start and grow a family.
00:52:05.000Lessen the total tax burden for a middle-class family.
00:52:07.000No more than 10% of total income can go to taxes, state, local, or property.
00:52:14.000Idea number five, restrict immigration to increase wages and also to be able to have a cohesive American culture.
00:52:20.000Idea number six, convince a generation that college is not a needed path to meaning.
00:52:25.000Idea number seven, healthcare transparency, the Price Transparency Act.
00:52:30.000Idea number eight, a self-sufficiency American agenda.
00:52:32.000Idea number nine, allow a parent trigger for tax credits to be used for vouchers and for private schooling.
00:52:37.000Idea number 10, put every single dollar of federal spending online in real time.
00:52:41.000Maybe even do an application, a mobile app, where you can see where every one of your federal bureaucrats is making, the money they're spending, the expense reports they're filing, and every single dollar that you earn, where is it going in real time?
00:52:54.000These 10 ideas can help revive the American middle class and save our country.
00:52:58.000The failure to be able to put forth real ideas that are just more than, well, we need less corporate taxes.
00:53:39.000Go to tpusa.com, tpusa.com, the nation's largest conservative student organization, over 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country at tpusa.com.
00:53:48.000If you want a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine in order to get into the running to win one, type in Charlie Kirk show, your podcast provider, hit subscribe, give us a five-star review screenshot, and email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:53:59.000And please consider supporting this program by going to charliekirk.com slash support.
00:54:03.000That is CharlieKirk.com slash support.
00:54:06.000We just had an amazing supporter call for all of our monthly supporters at CharlieKirk.com slash support, CharlieKirk.com slash support.
00:54:14.000And please email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com, your thoughts on this episode, and how we are able to revive the American middle class.
00:54:24.000Thank you guys so much for listening, and God bless.