The Charlie Kirk Show - Population Collapse - Why Americans Stopped Having Babies

00:00:00.000 Thank you for listening to this podcast one production.

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00:00:08.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we address the impending and looming population collapse.

00:00:16.000 What?

00:00:17.000 I thought we're going to overpopulate our planet.

00:00:20.000 No, we have a looming population crisis that no one is talking about.

00:00:25.000 We also talk about income disparity and what President Trump is doing about it.

00:00:29.000 Before we get started, please consider supporting our program at charliekirk.com slash support.

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00:01:05.000 Big episode in store.

00:01:07.000 Buckle up.

00:01:08.000 Here we go.

00:01:09.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:11.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:13.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:17.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:20.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:21.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:22.000 His 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.

00:01:30.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:39.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:42.000 As you know, we have been devoting a lot of time on this program to defending the middle class.

00:01:49.000 We even put together 10 ideas to reinvigorate the middle class and help family formation and marriages stay intact.

00:01:57.000 Conservatives have struggled to address this topic for years, and quite honestly, a lot of conservatives even ignore this problem exists.

00:02:05.000 Conservatives in the classic free market sense have always been, in some ways, blindly devoted to dogmatic market principles and the invisible hand.

00:02:16.000 And yes, I love free market policies and principles and ideas.

00:02:21.000 Milton Friedman is one of the most important thinkers that I look to that inspired me to get involved in politics in the first place.

00:02:28.000 However, we have to acknowledge that there is real income and wealth inequality for the billionaire class versus the rest of America, and it's growing.

00:02:37.000 Now, we have to ask ourselves first, why is it growing?

00:02:40.000 Is it a bad thing that it is growing?

00:02:42.000 Is it worth addressing?

00:02:43.000 And what are the more systemic issues that might arise from this sort of inequality that exists?

00:02:50.000 So before we get into this and we talk about how President Trump addressed it over the weekend, I want to be very clear.

00:02:57.000 I'm not someone who wants to admonish an individual just because they are able to create wealth.

00:03:04.000 I've said this before on college campuses, and I'll say it again today.

00:03:09.000 Just because someone got rich does not mean somebody else got poor.

00:03:13.000 Just because somebody else is able to accumulate wealth does not mean that they did it by exploiting another person.

00:03:20.000 In fact, most of the time when individuals are able to accumulate wealth, they did so by freely cooperating and trading with partners or people or individuals and were able to give value for value.

00:03:35.000 The deeper I dive into what has happened since the pandemic, that still remains true.

00:03:41.000 However, there are examples of certain individuals that are able to use their institutional incumbent advantage, a pseudo-monopoly, to be able to have such incredible amounts of market advantage that it begs the question, is it the best thing for the country?

00:04:00.000 And if this is happening, what does the middle class think of it?

00:04:05.000 Will they start to lose faith and hope in the system?

00:04:09.000 So let me be even more clear.

00:04:11.000 I actually think billionaires should exist.

00:04:13.000 Bernie Sanders does not.

00:04:15.000 I believe in hierarchies.

00:04:17.000 I believe in earned success.

00:04:19.000 I believe that someone should be able to take a risk in the marketplace and be rewarded for that.

00:04:24.000 I think entrepreneurship is a beautiful thing when you are able to have a good idea, work hard at it, perfect it, take a risk, and then see that risk benefit yourself, the community, the country, and possibly the world.

00:04:39.000 However, we are not honest with ourselves if we say that every single person on the planet is going to be an entrepreneur.

00:04:46.000 There are millions of people that have no interest in being an entrepreneur.

00:04:52.000 They want to go to work, raise a family, go to church, and live what I would call a stable and normal life.

00:04:59.000 Who's communicating to them?

00:05:01.000 What party represents them?

00:05:02.000 Well, it used to be the Democrat Party.

00:05:04.000 And now the Republican Party kind of backed into the...

00:05:08.000 Now the Republican Party kind of stumbled backwards into being a party that represents the American working class.

00:05:16.000 The Democrats have made a very risky wager.

00:05:20.000 You see, the Democrats, they basically want to represent America's elite and ruling class and America's permanent government dependent class, essentially the top 1% and the bottom 30 to 40%.

00:05:34.000 Their pathway to political monopolization and power is to get unlimited amount of campaign contributions from the Silicon Valley elites and from Wall Street, and also grow the amount of people that are dependent on the government, and also shrink the amount of people that are independent of government control.

00:05:54.000 Their vision for America is one where more people are on food stamps, not less.

00:05:58.000 Their vision of America is where Google has more power, not less.

00:06:03.000 And I want to dive into what President Trump said about this because it's very provocative, it's very interesting, and it caused a lot of headlines.

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00:07:44.000 So, over the weekend, President Trump proved he is a champion of the American middle class and a disruptor in chief.

00:07:51.000 He challenged traditional Republican orthodoxy and political establishment orthodoxy when he responded to a business insider video that showed the net worth of wealthy CEOs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos, whose net worth rose by an estimated $48 billion from March to June.

00:08:11.000 Zoom founder Eric Juan, he saw his net worth increase by $2.5 billion.

00:08:16.000 Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, he got $15 billion richer.

00:08:21.000 Casino billionaire Sheld Natalson, $5 billion.

00:08:24.000 Elon Musk, $17 billion.

00:08:27.000 This is the first time that President Trump has indicated that wealth disparity was an issue that needs to be fixed.

00:08:34.000 The Business Insider video proposed ideas to combat the wealth disparity with ideas such as forming a pandemic profiteering oversight committee.

00:08:42.000 Awful idea.

00:08:43.000 More regulations to keep billionaires from offshoring their profits.

00:08:46.000 Good intention, awful idea.

00:08:48.000 Including an emergency 10% millionaire income surtax, a wealth tax, and a progressive estate tax.

00:08:55.000 And a dramatic federal spending on charities.

00:08:59.000 So the president was not endorsing these fixes, just that there is a problem.

00:09:04.000 I mean, in 2020, we have seen Amazon stock go to record high, Walmart stock go to record high, Apple stock go to record high, Google's record high, Microsoft record high, Facebook record high, and the founders of these companies $168 billion richer this year.

00:09:20.000 And U.S. small businesses, 22% of them are closed forever.

00:09:26.000 So some of you might say, Charlie, what's the big deal?

00:09:28.000 All these companies work hard, they provide products, they should be rewarded for it.

00:09:32.000 I agree with that in theory.

00:09:33.000 In practice, I see something much more troubling, much more concerning.

00:09:39.000 I see an ever-growing trend, and it's called the Matthew Principle, which is right out of scripture where much will be given to those who have a lot, and those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

00:09:52.000 I'm paraphrasing the scripture.

00:09:54.000 Essentially, in times of crisis, you get more of what you already have.

00:09:58.000 In times of crisis, the extremes only get more pronounced.

00:10:03.000 So Amazon, who has incredible access to capital, they are able to take advantage of a crisis.

00:10:10.000 And I'm not saying taking advantage is all a bad thing, but they're able to take advantage of the crisis, which does hurt small businesses.

00:10:18.000 And so if you are asking me where this is going, I'm very concerned about this.

00:10:23.000 And I'll build out that argument in just a little bit.

00:10:26.000 In a general sense, conservatives believe that billionaires are a good thing.

00:10:30.000 Now, I want to be more clear about that.

00:10:32.000 I wrote this note as I was preparing for the show.

00:10:34.000 Conservatives believe that billionaires who had good ideas and earned their way to become billionaires are a good thing.

00:10:41.000 We as conservatives believe that they became rich generally through hard work and convincing incredible amounts of people to buy their goods and services.

00:10:50.000 This is not an easy thing to do.

00:10:52.000 It's not.

00:10:53.000 You have to create something pretty spectacular to get to that level of wealth.

00:10:57.000 Now, we should not necessarily penalize or demonize the rich.

00:11:01.000 We should make it easier for more and more Americans to succeed.

00:11:05.000 This is a major ideological difference between the left and conservatives.

00:11:10.000 What the president is doing here is a master stroke of political genius.

00:11:16.000 He has recast the Republican Party as the party of working men and women and the party of the middle class.

00:11:23.000 The Democrats have truly become the party of white urban progressives and coastal elites.

00:11:30.000 And the low-class working voters are those people that are perpetually dependent on the government, or they might not work at all.

00:11:37.000 The president's positioning has helped him win over people who work with their hands and shower before and after work. 0.86

00:11:48.000 This is a very important point.

00:11:50.000 President Trump was not advocating for any policy prescriptions to this.

00:11:54.000 Instead, he was making the correct observation that if this goes left unmentioned, all of a sudden the American middle class is going to lose faith in the system.

00:12:05.000 When your middle class loses faith in the very system that they live in, that is when economic and societal nihilism sets in.

00:12:14.000 Nihilism, best described, is the belief in nothing, that nothing matters.

00:12:19.000 My actions do not matter.

00:12:21.000 How hard I work does not matter.

00:12:24.000 I'm going to act as if there is no judgment.

00:12:26.000 There is no ultimate authority.

00:12:30.000 I am going to do whatever I want to do because there is no consequence to what I do.

00:12:36.000 A belief in nihilism is a miserable existence.

00:12:39.000 Most of the people in the streets are extreme nihilists.

00:12:43.000 They are Marxist nihilists.

00:12:45.000 That's why they find comfort and pleasure in destroying things that are not their own.

00:12:50.000 That is why they find meaning and satisfaction in widespread urban arson.

00:12:57.000 And so the president is rightfully pointing out a much more deeper philosophical, psychological, and cultural truth.

00:13:05.000 When the American middle class is not allowed to go to church, when the American middle class is not able to host a 10-person religious ceremony, when the American middle class has seen their home values plummet in the last six months and their property taxes go up and their personal debt increase tremendously,

00:13:26.000 when the American middle class is told that you can't go to work anymore, and then all of a sudden they see Jeff Bezos, someone who gives very little of his own personal wealth to charity, and his net worth go up by an extraordinary amount, the American middle class starts to wonder if the game is rigged.

00:13:46.000 That is a very dangerous thought to allow to continue.

00:13:52.000 I do not believe the game is rigged.

00:13:54.000 For the record, I don't.

00:13:56.000 Do I believe that it is more difficult than ever for working class families to get ahead?

00:14:01.000 Yes, mostly because of left-wing big government policies, not because of the free market, not because of capitalism.

00:14:09.000 My observation is I am in agreeance with the data that I see that the American middle class is struggling, but my policy prescription is completely different.

00:14:19.000 I think that economic freedom, private property rights, entrepreneurship, stable families, allowing our manufacturing to come back to this country, all those things actually result in an American flourishing middle class.

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00:15:40.000 Oren Cass, who is an economist, has this incredible statistic.

00:15:44.000 In 1985, it took 35 hours of work per week to support a family of four.

00:15:51.000 Now it takes over 53 weeks of work a year to support a family of four.

00:15:57.000 So Oren Cass, the economist, he then postulates that means we get fewer family formations, we have fewer children because of the cost, which we'll get into later in the show.

00:16:10.000 It's a lower quality of life, higher stress levels, a greater susceptibility of falling to socialism and even communism.

00:16:19.000 This last point is the point that we as conservatives don't talk about enough.

00:16:24.000 We hate socialism.

00:16:26.000 We should. 0.96

00:16:27.000 Marxism is evil.

00:16:29.000 I have entire podcasts dedicated to how evil the ideas of Marxism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism is.

00:16:38.000 Too rarely in the conservative movement and in conservative circles do we ask ourselves the question, how does this Marxism actually formulate in a country that is very wealthy?

00:16:50.000 It happens when the people that are the laborers, it happens when the people that are your workers, they see their net worth go down while they see the ruling class's income and net worth go up astronomically.

00:17:05.000 I admit, Marxism is tempting.

00:17:09.000 It is a promise that you no longer have to work.

00:17:12.000 It is a promise that things can be delivered to you free of cost.

00:17:16.000 We must understand that freedom thrives with opportunity, freedom, and hope.

00:17:23.000 The hope that you can have a vibrant and flourishing family.

00:17:27.000 The hope that you do not have to depend on the government to find meaning.

00:17:33.000 So as the income gap is growing, consider a few facts.

00:17:36.000 According to Pew, in 2018, households in the top fifth of earners with incomes of $130,000 or more brought in 52% of all U.S. income, more than the lower four-fifths combined.

00:17:51.000 In 1968, by comparison, the top 20% of earners of households brought in 43% of the nation's income, while those in the lower four-income quintiles accounted for 56%.

00:18:05.000 Among the top 5% of households, those with incomes of at least $248,729 in 2018, their share of the U.S. income rose from 16% in 1968 to 23%.

00:18:18.000 So to make sense of this for you, a smaller and smaller group of people are responsible for earning the most amount of money.

00:18:26.000 Now, part of this is because of government dependence, and part of this is because people are not in the workforce the way they should be.

00:18:32.000 But another way of measuring inequality is to look at net worth or the value of assets owned by a family, such as a home or a savings account, minus outstanding debt, such as a mortgage or student loans.

00:18:46.000 In 1989, the richest 5% of families had 114 times as much wealth as families in the second quintile, one tier above the lowest.

00:18:56.000 By 2016, the top 5% held 248 times as much wealth at the median.

00:19:05.000 This trend accelerated after the Great Recession of 2007, 2008, and it accelerated during this pandemic again, especially for the billionaire class.

00:19:14.000 This happens because we continue to print cheap money.

00:19:18.000 Cheap money helps the ruling class, not the workers.

00:19:21.000 We continue to pass bailouts for our massive mega corporations, such as our airlines and our banks, and the workers are left behind.

00:19:29.000 So what exactly is happening?

00:19:31.000 Well, there's a number of different root causes.

00:19:35.000 You see, the increased globalized nature of the economy has not been totally perfect for the American middle class.

00:19:43.000 We were hypnotized and persuaded by so many people in the ruling class that this was the best thing that ever happened.

00:19:50.000 The fact that we hollowed out our heartland and our industrial base.

00:19:54.000 When we offshored our jobs to China and the developing world, we were told that this will make us richer.

00:20:00.000 Now, mind you, this took millions of good paying jobs with it.

00:20:04.000 And there's a half-truth of comparative advantage.

00:20:07.000 I was always really confused, and I did not articulate this as well as I probably could of growing up, when people in the free market community, of which I have a lot of respect for these people, they said that comparative advantage and offshoring jobs, that it was nothing but a good thing for America.

00:20:25.000 I was always really confused by this.

00:20:26.000 I said, nothing but a good thing?

00:20:28.000 You're trying to tell me that there's no losers in this?

00:20:30.000 I just couldn't wrap my head around that.

00:20:32.000 And now I can understand why I was originally confused.

00:20:36.000 I was confused for a good reason.

00:20:37.000 Because of course, when you shut down a manufacturing plant, there's no guarantee that all 600 of those workers are going to find meaningful work afterwards.

00:20:46.000 They're not going to slip into drug addiction.

00:20:48.000 They're not going to get on government dependence and lose meaning.

00:20:53.000 Look, there's also a pure scalability of modern technology, which is a new dynamic we could never anticipate in previous generations.

00:21:01.000 The scalability of standard oil, for example, was very massive.

00:21:05.000 Same with Ford and General Motors.

00:21:08.000 But those industries required far more manpower than modern technology.

00:21:12.000 Now, consider Apple, which became the first company with a $1 trillion market cap in 2018, making it the, quote, largest company in the world, but only in terms of market capitalization, not in other key measures.

00:21:27.000 Fortune magazine first created a roster of America's 500 biggest corporations in 1955.

00:21:33.000 In 1955, with almost $10 billion annual sales, thanks to its 54% share of the U.S. auto market, General Motors, GM, topped Fortune's list that year.

00:21:43.000 But GM was also big in every other way.

00:21:46.000 Stock market valuation or market cap, where it was number one, assets, number two after ATT, and employment, number two, just after ATT, at 624,000 workers.

00:21:58.000 For much of that post-war era, the biggest corporations were big in every way, and market cap was very highly correlated with revenues, employment, and assets.

00:22:10.000 Now, that's not the case anymore.

00:22:12.000 The post-industrial corporation of today, thanks to globalization and pro-China trade, is often heavy on market cap, but, like Apple, light on employment and hard assets.

00:22:24.000 Apple doesn't own enormous factories to manufacture the iPhone or much of its products.

00:22:30.000 Foxconn does, and they have a lease agreement with them.

00:22:32.000 Apple does not have much in terms of hard assets relative to its total assets.

00:22:37.000 Apple is not even among the top 50 largest employers in the United States.

00:22:41.000 They are not unique.

00:22:43.000 So in 1968, the most valuable companies, IBM, ATT, GM, Exxon, and Kodak, they employed a combined 2 million people.

00:22:51.000 In 2018, the most valuable companies, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook, they employ a combined 918,000 people.

00:23:02.000 So the most valuable companies employ less people, and that trend is only going to accelerate.

00:23:08.000 If you look another 20 years out from now, in the year 2038, the most valuable companies will probably employ less than 500,000 people.

00:23:17.000 You're able to do more with less human beings.

00:23:19.000 Now, the pure free market fundamentalist will say that's a good thing.

00:23:23.000 You are more efficient.

00:23:25.000 It's a good thing through one metric.

00:23:28.000 It's not a good thing when you're trying to build a sustainable middle class in a functioning country that doesn't allow a socialist revolution to occur.

00:23:37.000 These are good paying jobs that we no longer have.

00:23:40.000 These are jobs that were able to sustain a family, able to fund local churches, able to keep small businesses alive, able to fund a future.

00:23:49.000 So look, we have to also acknowledge that government rules and regulations have contributed to an unequal playing field.

00:23:57.000 This helps benefit larger companies to stay in power, to acquire competition early on when they are still cheap.

00:24:05.000 They are able to write rules and regulations that protect them and lobby our feckless representatives to protect them.

00:24:15.000 So take this, for example, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gave social media companies legal immunity from being treated as publishers of content.

00:24:24.000 So if a user posts something libelous, Twitter or Facebook is not held accountable.

00:24:30.000 They are treated as a platform, even though they are obviously a publisher.

00:24:34.000 They have used this protection to amass massive amounts of influence and wealth.

00:24:39.000 Meanwhile, they have soaked up a disproportionate amount of ad revenue, bankrupting local newspapers, for example.

00:24:47.000 This has led to the concentration of reporting on the coasts, and therefore to more fake news and the liberal media establishment.

00:24:55.000 This is not the free market at work.

00:24:57.000 This is a combination of regulation, anti-competitive business practices, and monopoly power that we have not seen in generations.

00:25:05.000 Here's another factor to consider.

00:25:07.000 Government bailouts.

00:25:09.000 Another way the government has meddled in the free market is through picking winners and losers through bailouts.

00:25:14.000 I was incredibly opposed to the bailouts that came with the latest stimulus bill, and I remain opposed to big government bailouts.

00:25:24.000 So the Business Insider video, and they did get everything right, but their observation, I think, is actually something that we as conservatives should not reject outright, points out that during the economic recession of 2007, 2008, the government spent over $750 billion on bailing out big banks and corporations.

00:25:42.000 By contrast, only spent $75 billion on reducing interest rates for homeowners.

00:25:48.000 That's one-tenth the money that went to normal middle-class Americans than what went to big businesses and shareholders.

00:25:55.000 Were they too big to fail?

00:25:57.000 I guess.

00:25:58.000 I actually have a different opinion, but maybe they were.

00:26:00.000 Maybe there's something I'm missing.

00:26:02.000 But here's the bigger question.

00:26:03.000 Would those companies going under be worse than keeping them afloat with taxpayer money?

00:26:09.000 That's actually an entirely different question.

00:26:12.000 I am not for government bailouts and stimulus in practice or in general.

00:26:16.000 They almost always go to the ruling class elite, almost always, not to workers.

00:26:23.000 The government's intervention, however, likely contributed to all the income disparities we see today.

00:26:30.000 This is where we disagree with on the left.

00:26:33.000 The left thinks that, oh, look, we are so unequal because of the free market.

00:26:37.000 I say we are unequal, more so than I think is healthy.

00:26:42.000 I think some inequality, of course, is helpful, of course.

00:26:44.000 I'm not saying everyone should have the same income.

00:26:46.000 I'm not saying billionaires shouldn't exist.

00:26:48.000 But I think that the trend that we are going to is an untouchable economic elite and a permanent underclass.

00:26:56.000 I say it's because of government programs that made this happen.

00:26:59.000 That's where I disagree with the left fundamentally.

00:27:02.000 You see, the asset holding class had liquidity to scoop up cheap stocks and other assets, and they were able to fully benefit from the recovery, and they did this again during this last crisis.

00:27:14.000 As the Business Insider video pointed out, the S ⁇ P increased 462% during the decade-long bull market, while wages only increased 0.4% from 2009 to 2012.

00:27:28.000 There are three other factors that we need to consider.

00:27:30.000 Number one, Obamacare, which increased healthcare spending and cost for the consumer.

00:27:36.000 This is a major cost of living, which is directly impacted for middle Americans.

00:27:42.000 This increase is unsustainable.

00:27:44.000 Oren Cass has it as one of the four main cost centers in his Thrive Index.

00:27:50.000 Student loans.

00:27:52.000 Government-backed student loans increase costs by backing loans on increasingly useless degrees.

00:27:59.000 Regulations.

00:28:01.000 Obama oversaw one of the most anemic economic recoveries in American history.

00:28:07.000 Why?

00:28:08.000 Well, because of government regulation and scapegoating of American business.

00:28:13.000 He made business the enemy.

00:28:15.000 All of this is government meddling.

00:28:18.000 All of this is not because of the free market.

00:28:20.000 It is the absence of a free market.

00:28:23.000 It's important to remember that under Trump's economy before the pandemic, many of these underlying root causes were actually dramatically improving.

00:28:33.000 By empowering small business and through deregulation, the wages of the lowest 10% of earners were actually growing faster than the top 10%.

00:28:41.000 Real wages were actually increasing.

00:28:44.000 By allowing for more competition in healthcare, prices were going down dramatically.

00:28:48.000 Same with prescription drugs.

00:28:50.000 We were seeing the return of manufacturing.

00:28:52.000 We saw the onshoring of trillions of dollars that were once housed overseas.

00:28:57.000 These are all positive steps in the right direction.

00:29:00.000 And we talked about 10 ideas to save America.

00:29:03.000 And I encourage you to go back in the archives of the Charlie Kirk show.

00:29:08.000 And I encourage you to go back in the archives of the Charlie Kirk show and listen to the 10 ideas, the moonshot to help save the American middle class.

00:29:14.000 I encourage you to check it out.

00:29:16.000 It's one of the favorite episodes that I have done.

00:29:18.000 And if we are honest with ourselves, it is government programs and government lockdowns that have hurt the American worker and the American middle class.

00:29:29.000 And this is part of the reason why Donald Trump's poll numbers are going up, because they actually trust him with the economy.

00:29:35.000 The middle class knows that Donald Trump will be their defender, which is why his tweet this last weekend was so important.

00:29:44.000 And so before we get even deeper into some of the more underlying causes that are so troubling, who is your wireless provider?

00:29:51.000 Is it AT ⁇ T, Verizon, or T-Mobile?

00:29:54.000 What if I told you that PeerTalk USA uses the exact same network as one of those carriers?

00:29:59.000 Same towers, same exact coverage, but literally costs you half?

00:30:04.000 I know it sounds crazy.

00:30:05.000 When I first heard about PeerTalk, I thought this is too good to be true.

00:30:09.000 But then I looked at their customer reviews and I actually saw the product work for myself.

00:30:13.000 Sarah from Abilene, Texas says the service is amazing.

00:30:16.000 Love the price.

00:30:17.000 The speed is quick.

00:30:18.000 The reception is perfect.

00:30:19.000 Eugene from Granbury, Texas says, good service.

00:30:22.000 Haven't had any problems in our travels.

00:30:24.000 Switching is so easy.

00:30:26.000 This is free money if you do this quickly and easily.

00:30:28.000 And listen to these instructions.

00:30:30.000 You can keep your phone.

00:30:31.000 They'll send you a new SIM card so you can get the same great service you currently have, but at half the price.

00:30:36.000 It's unlimited talk, text, and two gigabytes of data for just $20 a month.

00:30:36.000 Listen to this.

00:30:41.000 For college kids out there, you cannot get a better deal.

00:30:44.000 And the average person is saving $400 a year.

00:30:46.000 So why is it so much cheaper than AT ⁇ T, Verizon, and T-Mobile?

00:30:50.000 No retail stores, no billion dollar a year ad campaign.

00:30:53.000 So here's what you do.

00:30:54.000 Unlimited talk, unlimited text plus two gigabytes of data for just $20 a month.

00:30:59.000 All you need to do is grab your mobile phone, file pound $250, and say keyword, Charlie Kirk.

00:31:03.000 That's pound $250.

00:31:04.000 Say keyword, Charlie Kirk.

00:31:06.000 And when you do, you'll save 50% off your first month.

00:31:09.000 It's easy.

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00:31:10.000 I highly recommend it.

00:31:12.000 So, all of these economic challenges have real life effects.

00:31:17.000 I saw an article on Bloomberg.com, not exactly a go-to destination for me lately.

00:31:22.000 Bloomberg treated me nicely many years ago, and they sometimes treat me fairly, sometimes not so much.

00:31:26.000 Not a fan of their owner, but I still read them.

00:31:28.000 I think they actually have some thoughtful stuff every once in a while.

00:31:32.000 I saw this article, and I couldn't believe it.

00:31:34.000 And this is a fire alarm.

00:31:36.000 This is a red alert.

00:31:38.000 This should make everyone stop and pause and ask themselves, what are we doing to our country?

00:31:44.000 Bloomberg.com, July 29th.

00:31:47.000 Americans aren't making babies, and that's bad for the economy.

00:31:50.000 So that's the headline.

00:31:52.000 Here's the subheadline: The U.S. could see 500,000 fewer births next year, which will have repercussions long after the pandemic is over.

00:32:02.000 This is by Peter Coy.

00:32:03.000 I encourage you to check out this article, and I source it on charliekirk.com.

00:32:08.000 We will put it on there for you to check out charliekirk.com.

00:32:10.000 This is a massive story.

00:32:13.000 Just to give you an idea, the United States fertility rate in 2006 was around 2.1 children per woman, what demographers call the replacement rate, versus what 1.5 is for the European Union.

00:32:27.000 Now, the United States rate is below 1.7, and that's no longer even assured.

00:32:34.000 It's going to drop further.

00:32:36.000 We need to take pause.

00:32:38.000 And we need to ask ourselves, why are people not having children?

00:32:42.000 And this is something that I think the Republicans get so wrong.

00:32:46.000 Republicans get this so unbelievably wrong because they say, well, it's because of nothing but culture.

00:32:53.000 I think it plays a big role.

00:32:54.000 Probably the biggest role.

00:32:56.000 But it's not the only role.

00:32:57.000 It's not the only input in the equation.

00:33:00.000 It's not the only ingredient in the recipe.

00:33:02.000 Economics plays a huge role in this.

00:33:05.000 People don't think they can afford children anymore, and they're right.

00:33:08.000 Look how expensive it is to have children.

00:33:11.000 What we are up to right now is population collapse.

00:33:16.000 If these trends continue and the entire world becomes some variation of Aspen, Colorado, where some homes are going for $2,000 a square foot, cash, where they're paying $28, $30, $40 million a home, and the underclass in Aspen, Colorado don't own anything and they can't have children, they can't take someone off, they can't take someone out to a date, let alone accumulate wealth.

00:33:16.000 That's right.

00:33:43.000 What does that mean for our country?

00:33:45.000 Well, that means we are going to see widespread population calamity.

00:33:50.000 This is not even a question anymore of the replacement rate of natural-born Americans, which a lot of people focus on.

00:33:56.000 This is much broader than that.

00:33:58.000 This is, are we going to continue to have a civilization that can sustain itself?

00:34:04.000 If you look at young men in particular, an extraordinary amount of young men by the time they reach 30 will not be getting married.

00:34:13.000 By the time they reach 35, they will not be getting married.

00:34:16.000 Young women are far less likely to marry than any other time in U.S. history.

00:34:20.000 And when people do get married, they're having fewer and fewer children. 0.96

00:34:26.000 So what if the GDP goes up?

00:34:29.000 If we're not having fulfilling and flourishing families, what kind of country are we living in?

00:34:33.000 Is all that matters just gross domestic product growth?

00:34:36.000 Is that the most important thing?

00:34:39.000 I actually think we should judge a country's success on a variety of different metrics.

00:34:44.000 For example, are you able to have a country that doesn't have a suicide rate that goes up every single year, like ours does?

00:34:51.000 Is it easy to have four or five children if you so choose?

00:34:54.000 I don't mean easy in raising them.

00:34:56.000 Is it comfortable economically?

00:34:58.000 Are you able to do it? 1.00

00:35:00.000 Does the mother have to go in the workforce immediately after having the child because of how much everything costs?

00:35:07.000 If we do not have good answers to these questions, then we are not actually social conservatives and we are not Republicans that care about strong families.

00:35:15.000 If we are nothing but just saying we need economic freedom for everyone all the time, corporate tax rates, I agree at those things, by the way, and we're okay with America having 500,000 less children, we are not going to have a country.

00:35:28.000 By the way, there was a myth out there that, oh, the Hispanics are going to have more children and they will keep the birth rate up.

00:35:34.000 Not the case anymore.

00:35:35.000 Hispanic birth rate is plummeting, plummeting, all but disappearing.

00:35:39.000 When I talk to young people, a lot of them say, well, Charlie, I can't find someone I want to marry.

00:35:44.000 Very common piece of feedback.

00:35:46.000 It's number one.

00:35:48.000 Number two is, I might have found someone that I want to marry.

00:35:50.000 I don't know if I want to bring kids into this world because it's such an awful and broken world.

00:35:54.000 Awful reason, by the way.

00:35:55.000 Number three is, I can't afford it.

00:35:58.000 And number four, it's, what's the point?

00:36:00.000 So it's some sort of societal nihilism, which is just depressing and dangerous.

00:36:06.000 This right here should be the headline that every American should know by heart: 500,000 less children are about to be brought into the world voluntarily.

00:36:18.000 And you just look at the deeper numbers here.

00:36:21.000 If you do not have a civilization that can continue to have a birth rate to sustain itself, then all of a sudden you're either going to have to supplement that through cheap immigration.

00:36:31.000 What I mean by cheap immigration is low-wage immigration that brings down wages and brings basically cheap labor immigration is probably a better way to put it, cheap labor immigration, or through some form of incentive structure to have people have more children.

00:36:49.000 And this is actually a perfect transition to how I want to end the program of something that President Trump signed that is terrific.

00:36:55.000 See, the president understands the dangers of cheap labor immigration. 0.97

00:37:01.000 President Trump just signed an executive order to protect American jobs from foreign labor.

00:37:06.000 President Trump took action to prevent Americans from being displaced by foreign workers and offshore labor using federal dollars.

00:37:12.000 The new executive order combats the misuse of H-1B visas.

00:37:16.000 The U.S. H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ graduate-level workers in specialty occupations.

00:37:24.000 These jobs are supposed to require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields such as IT, finance, accounting, architecture, engineering, mathematics, science, and medicine.

00:37:33.000 However, corporations have far too often exploited the H-1B visas to replace qualified American workers with low-cost foreign ones.

00:37:42.000 The administration is finalizing guidance to close loopholes and stop employers from moving H-1B workers to other employers' job sites to displace American workers.

00:37:50.000 This executive order directs all federal agencies to focus on hiring Americans for lucrative federal contracts.

00:37:58.000 Well done, President Trump. 0.78

00:38:00.000 It also requires the only U.S. citizens to be appointed to the government's competitive service.

00:38:05.000 This decision follows the news that the Tennessee Valley Authority TVA planned to outsource 20% of its technology jobs to companies based in foreign countries.

00:38:13.000 I mean, this is an outrage.

00:38:14.000 The TVA, of course, was created in the 1930s by FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his New Deal program.

00:38:21.000 It is federally owned.

00:38:23.000 That action would have put more than 200 American jobs at risk during a global pandemic with 25 million people out of work.

00:38:30.000 The TVA CEO, the Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Jeff Laiash, has now, quote, indicated a very strong willingness to reverse course.

00:38:37.000 I hope so.

00:38:38.000 This is the creativity and the bravery of President Trump.

00:38:43.000 What other presidents would have done this?

00:38:45.000 President Trump's poll numbers are going up because the president is restricting immigration, putting American workers first, and has a very clear vision of how the American middle class is going to succeed and thrive.

00:38:57.000 The middle class trusts him.

00:39:00.000 President Trump should come out and say, I want to get the American birth rate up.

00:39:04.000 The left would lose their mind.

00:39:06.000 President Trump should say, I want to make it easier for mothers to have kids. 0.85

00:39:10.000 The left will lose their mind.

00:39:11.000 He will win in a landslide.

00:39:13.000 This is an issue that concerns everyone.

00:39:15.000 What could be more important than your children or your grandchildren?

00:39:18.000 And for those of you that are listening that have grandkids, you should be very worried about the world that your kids are growing up and your grandkids are growing up in.

00:39:26.000 Very worried.

00:39:27.000 If the birth rate is going down by 500,000 now, we are going to see population collapse.

00:39:35.000 We must get serious about middle-class economics.

00:39:37.000 We must get serious about why these trends are continuing.

00:39:40.000 And if the Republican Party becomes the party of strong and stable families, becomes the party of middle-class workers, not just stock market gains, we'll win every election convincingly.

00:39:53.000 Email me your questions on this podcast, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:39:58.000 Type in Charlie Kirk Show to your podcast provider, Charlie Kirk Show, hit subscribe, give us a five-star review, screenshot it, and email us if you want to win a signed copy of the New York Times bestseller, The MAGA Doctrine.

00:40:09.000 If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com.

00:40:13.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:40:16.000 Check out charlikirk.com/slash support, and please consider supporting our program.

00:40:21.000 It goes directly to helping underwrite the cost of our entire production team, our travel, our research, and allows us to stay safe against threatened boycotts from the awful left.

00:40:33.000 CharlieKirk.com/slash support.

00:40:36.000 Thank you guys so much for listening.

00:40:38.000 We got a big week in store.

00:40:39.000 Make sure to go back and listen to some of the episodes over the weekend.

00:40:42.000 Well worth it.

00:40:43.000 Thank you guys so much.

00:40:44.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 05, 2020

Population Collapse - Why Americans Stopped Having Babies

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