America's Trillion Dollar Burden: Is Welfare Destroying the U.S. Economy?
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Summary
Biden wants to spend $2.6 trillion more on entitlement programs, and it's going to cost you and I roughly $12.7 trillion over the next 10 years. That's a lot of money, and most of that money is going to be spent on things like food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security, food assistance, and other government programs. Is this unsustainable?
Transcript
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Do you have anybody in your family that overextended themselves by trying to help
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everybody in their family that eventually led to a divorce and a bankruptcy? Can you think about
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that person? I want you to think about this here. Let's just say you're making $63,000 per year,
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which is roughly $5,200 per month. What percentage of that income would you be comfortable giving to
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aging parents to help them out on a monthly basis? Maybe you said 10%. What's 10%? Roughly
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$500 a month. Fine. Now you may say, why are we using $63,000? Here's why. Because if you add
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eight additional zeros to it, you would come out with America's income, which is roughly $6.3
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trillion. However, do you know what percentage of that income America uses for entitlement programs?
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Ready? 52%. That means if you made $63,000 per year, you would give $33,000 away for entitlement
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programs. That's what we're doing in America right now. By the way, of the $3.3 trillion of
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entitlement program, $1.3 trillion of it is only towards welfare. That's 59 million Americans that
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on a monthly basis receive a welfare check. 19% of America. So the question becomes, is this
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sustainable? How long can America go until we go bankrupt? We're going to talk about that today.
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Okay. So if you give value out of this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
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Let's get right into it. So why are we talking about welfare? Because Biden just proposed that he wants
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to take that $1.3 trillion, of which $756 goes to Medicaid, $208 goes to other income security,
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$147 goes to food and nutrition, like food stamps, $124 goes to housing, Section 8, $70 billion goes to
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unemployment. President Biden wants to raise that to $2.6 trillion. And it stays like that till 2033,
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costing you and I roughly $12.7 trillion over the next 10 years. Okay. So now let's break that down,
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the $2.6 trillion to see where that money is going to be spending. Let's look all the way at the top.
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Child tax credit expansion for three years, $470 billion. By the way, we're going to go a little
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bit deeper into this program to see what that program is really all about. Government child care,
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424. Government paid family leave, 325. Government preschool, $200 billion. For states to expand Medicaid,
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$200 billion. Expand Indian Health Service, 185. Medicaid home and community-based care,
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$150. Expand AITC, $137 billion. Expand Obamacare subsidies, $130 billion. Then we have
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double Pell Grant, $96 billion. Free community college, $90 billion. Expand housing subsidies,
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$60 billion. Public health, $43 billion. Behavioral health, equity-based tuition subsidies. Expand
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school meal subsidies. Extend trade adjustment assistance and Medicaid nutrition coverage,
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total $2.6 trillion. It's interesting when I'm looking at these numbers because Cenk Uygur and I
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got into a debate specifically over this topic. You'll see what it is, but let me first explain to you
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what this child tax credit is. You know what's the crazy thing about all this money we're printing?
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Every time we print trillions, oh, let's do $2.6 trillion. Guess who that money goes to? It
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goes to low and middle income, but low and middle income families don't know how to keep their money.
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They spend their money and that money eventually flows to who? To the wealthy. And what increases
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value? These non-duplicatable assets. One of the classes being alternative assets such as art.
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access today. The American Rescue Plan increased the amount of child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,600
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for qualifying children under age 6 and $3,000 for other qualifying children under the age of 18. So
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just think about it. The more kids you have, and if you're not in a marriage, you get more money given
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to you by the government. Guess what that incentivizes? We're going to talk about that here in a minute.
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Wait till you see the data on that. Second one, child care. Biden 2024 proposal includes
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$22 billion for existing early care and education programs up from 10.5% from 2023 levels,
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including $9 billion for federal block grants. Paid family leave. The proposed program would
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provide workers up to 12 paid weeks off to bond with a new child, care for a family member, or heal
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from their own serious illness. So now you may be watching and saying, Pat, I get it. Where are you
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going with this? We have to help these people. They need help. What should we do? Just leave them
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alone? Well, let me give you an idea how we got here because if you don't pay attention to this stuff,
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you're paying for it, your tax is going to increase. During the Great Depression, FDR wanted
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to come out with a temporary solution to help those who couldn't take care of themselves.
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Eventually, by 1935, at the State of Union address, FDR declared the time has come for action
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by the national government to provide security against the major hazards and uncertainties of
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life. He went on to propose the creation of the federal unemployment, the old age insurance
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program. He also called for guaranteed benefits for poor single mothers and their children,
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along with other dependent persons. And a few months later, the Social Security Act established
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a national welfare system. Keep in mind, prior to this time, we don't have entitlement programs,
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okay? We're getting by with no entitlement programs. All of a sudden, he announces that it's supposed
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to be temporary and guess what happens? Becomes permanent. But the key word here is the following.
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Guaranteed benefits for poor single mothers and their children, along with other dependent
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persons. Let's see. They say bad policies has consequences. Did this influence how many new
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single mothers we had in America? Did it influence how our kids did? Let's look at the data. So this
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chart right here is from the U.S. Government Census Bureau, okay? And it's showing you the growth of
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unwed childbearing in U.S. from 29. Notice if you look at 1935, flat, less than 4% of the babies born
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are born to a single mother. That means 96% of all babies born in 1940 were born to a family where there's a
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mother and a father. 96%. Then that goes from there to now, 40% of babies being born are born to a
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single mother, not married, no father figure. You know what this tells you? We can look at one other
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data. If you go to 1964, which was the War on Poverty, this is the program that Lyndon Johnson
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came up with. He launched the Medicare and Medicaid and expanded housing subsidies, urban development
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programs, employment and training programs, food stamps, social security, and welfare benefits.
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These programs more than tripled real federal expenditure on health, education, and welfare,
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which grew to over 15% of the federal budget by 1970. Today, it's at 52%. Take a look at what
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happens after 64 as well. Spike to 40%. So somebody may say, well, you know, how dare you make these
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comparisons? Why would you do this? It's called data. And the great thing about data is the more years you
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have to see if something's working or not. The proof is in the pudding. This doesn't lie. This is
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numbers. These were bad policies that incentivized women to have kids out of wedlock. It's not me
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telling you this. It's the data telling you this. So you may say, Pat, I need more data. No problem.
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I'll give you more data. Here's another one to look at. Again, from the U.S. Census Bureau, if you look at
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this, this is total families with children from 1959 till today. If you look at this, look at the top.
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Married couple families with children. It's 25,000. You got to add three zeros to it because
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it's in thousands, which means 25 million. We've been pretty much the same during that 60 year period,
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whatever the timeline is. But if you look at the bottom in the red, single parent families with
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children, we have three X'd in 60 years. More people are saying, all good. I'm going to have more
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kids with no husband or wife being in the household together. These kids are being raised by a single
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parent. Now you may say, Pat, I mean, it's just one program. It's not like we have so many
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different programs. Let me read you all the programs and you tell me if you heard of these
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before. First one, Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF,
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the Women, Infants, and Children Food Program, WIC, Supplemental Social Security Food Stamps and
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Child Nutrition Programs, Public Housing and Section 8 Housing, and Medicaid. By the way, while married
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couples with children can also receive aid from these programs, most assistance to families with
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children goes to single parent households. 45.4% of families headed by single mothers receive food
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stamps. 51.4% of single mothers have never been married. Welfare programs financially enable
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single parenthood. Who does it hurt? The kids. And if the kids are raised without discipline,
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who does it hurt? Your neighborhood. So this next part, I'm going to read it to you. What I want to
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challenge you to do is actually follow it with me and listen to it while we're going through this.
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You'll see why. Let's read this together. A major problem is that the means-tested welfare system
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actively penalizes low-income parents, ready, who do marry, who do marry. You're incentivized if you
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don't marry. You're penalized if you do get married. All means-tested welfare programs are
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designed so that a family's benefits are reduced as earnings rise. The more money you make and you're
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independent, your benefits go lower. You're like, why would I work harder to make more money? My benefits
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are getting lower. I'm not going to work. So you're going to send me money? I am. That's what that
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means. In practice, this means if a low-income single mother marries an employed father, her
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welfare benefits will generally be substantially reduced. The mother can maximize welfare by
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remaining unmarried and keeping the father's income off the books. Tell me that makes any sense
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for you. If this is the incentive program that we have, what do you think people are going to do?
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dove.com to learn more. Maximize the benefits without having to work. For example, a single
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mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year would generally receive around $5,200 per year of
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food stamps benefits. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps
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would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving benefits from Section 8 or public housing would
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receive a subsidy worth on average around $11,000 per year if she was not employed. But if she marries a
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man earning $20,000 per year, those benefits would be cut nearly in half. Both food stamps and housing
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programs provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separated and unmarried.
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So some people will say, Pat, stop it. You know, we have to take care of these folks. It's not like
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these people are not self-sufficient. Why are you discriminating amongst these people? Let me give
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you more data. I'm going to give you two of them. Marriage promotes self-sufficiency. These are
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percentages of families with children that lack self-sufficiency. You see the 37.1%? This is
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single-parent, female-headed families. 37.1% of them lack self-sufficiency. They need you and I,
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the government taxpayers, to take care of them. But look at the other side. Married parent families,
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only 6.8% need help. That means 93.2% are self-sufficient. And this next one is my favorite
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chart. You know why? Because so many times you'll do something and at the beginning it looks good.
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You see it's working. Look how awesome it is. Look what we're doing to reduce poverty. But you know
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what this data shows? It shows it took us 55 years to realize how terrible of an idea this was. Take a
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look at this chart. So 1947, if you look at all the way to the left, top, percentage of individuals who
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were poor by the official poverty standard. Keeps going lower and lower and lower. What a noble program
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by FDR. And boom, 64. Lyndon Johnson, lower, lower, lower. And they go to 1990. Look at the red.
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Total means-tested welfare spending in billions of constant dollars goes higher and higher and higher.
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And the blue stays. And this chart only goes to 2012. It's an additional 11 years since then.
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We're at 52% of the 6.3 trillion. And by the way, this ends in 2013. There's an additional
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10 years to it. What do you think it happened? You think it went lower? It went higher and higher
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and higher. Today it's 52% entitlement programs. 59 million Americans receive welfare program today.
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How long can we go with this to sustain it? We can't sustain it today, let alone 10 more years,
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20 more years. And while politicians, you know what they're saying? Oh, you are so selfish if you
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decide to get rid of these entitlement programs. There's no way you should re-elect this individual.
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Why? He's giving you good ideas or she's giving you good ideas, but you're playing off of fear
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because you've given people so many free entitlement programs that they're addicted to it. You know who
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does things like that? You ever heard of drug dealers, what they do? They give you a little
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bit of crack or cocaine or whatever, and then eventually, a little bit for free. Then, hey,
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pay up. Then pay up. Now they're like, they can't get off of it. What happens? You ruined that
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person's life. These people, the 59 million, what percentage of their dreams they think is going to
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become a reality? What do you think? All of that was taken away from them. Done. Done. Just because
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you give a little bit of drugs, let's replace it with some entitlement programs. Same consequences.
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You're hurting these people long-term. You're loving them over short-term, but you're destroying
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their lives long-term. So a few things, I've been watching and saying, Pat, you know, what do you want
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us to do? Do we just cut this whole thing all of a sudden? Of course, we can't do that suddenly, but
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what if we take that $3.3 trillion that we have, and every year we cut at 10%, meaning 3.3 goes to
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3, goes to 2.7, maybe 2.5, maybe 2.3, maybe 2.1. Eventually, within the next 15, 20 years,
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we're down to a very small amount of money that we're giving to this. Oh, Pat, there's no way that
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would, I understand it's not going to, because these congressmen with unlimited terms they can run,
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they're never going to pass something like this, because you need term limits, and they're not going
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to let that happen. I'm just telling you that's the solution, because long-term, if you don't agree to this,
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you know who's getting screwed? The kids and our grandkids. And all we're saying is, guys,
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you can handle it. You go out and handle all these problems. I'll give you another one here for you
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as well. If we're rewarding behavior for people to have more kids, and we're going to give them
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entitlement programs, what do you think people are going to do? What if we do the other way around?
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What if we reward people who are married having kids with a job? What if we do that? Oh my God,
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you think people will change? Of course they've changed. I've ran a sales organization for 23 years.
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I've run my own insurance company for the last 14 years. Do you know how many times I change a
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compensation program? 50, 60, 70 times. You know what happens when I had a comp where people were
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writing bogus insurance business, but they were just kind of writing business because they were
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competing, and I changed it. Overnight, all the bogus business disappeared. Like, literally,
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overnight, the bad business disappeared, because the incentive program I came up with wasn't a good
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one. So we had to change it. What happened? Suddenly, everyone's income went up. And the people that,
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you know, were doing their thing, they were improving. They were making an effort to get better,
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because the incentive program changed. We also have to change the incentive programs that we have.
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But last but not least, let me give you the most important one. I got four kids. My dad, when I
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was, I don't know how old I was, eight years old, nine years old, told me a story about being a man.
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He says, Pat, let me tell you the story here. I told the story in Austin a couple weeks ago. He said
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this to me. He says, Pat, one day, father wakes up his son. It was summer, so the kid wasn't going to
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school. He says, son, today you're going to become a man. He says, what do you mean I'm going to become a man?
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You need to go out there and make $5 today. The son says, dad, I'm 12 years old. I'm 11.
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I'm 11 years old. What do you mean I need to go make $5? He says, you need to go make $5 today to be a man today.
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I said, dad, come on, dad, I'm a kid. No reason. Boom. Papa leaves. Dad leaves. Son is like, $5. My God, mom,
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I shouldn't work. It's not safe out there. Mom says, don't worry about it, baby. Here's $5. When daddy comes home,
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just give it to him. Daddy, you made $5. It's between you and I. No problem. Dad comes home. Did you make your $5?
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Of course, dad. I made the $5. Here's the $5, daddy. Awesome. Dad grabs the $5, throws it in the fireplace.
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The fire starts burning the $5. Mommy chases after the $5. Daddy realized mommy gave the kid $5.
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He says, son, you didn't make the $5. Kid goes to sleep, feels like crap, wakes up in the morning.
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Dad says, hey, today, you got to make $5. Dad goes to work. Son goes to mom. Hey, mom, can I give,
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I'm not giving you nothing. He's not going to burn another $5 of mine. You got to go figure this thing
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out. Son goes up, starts begging everybody in the community, starting with his uncle. And his uncle,
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finally, after begging a few different relatives, he raises $5 through begging. Entitlement programs
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through begging, he gets $5. Comes home. Mom, guess what? I got $5. I talked to uncle this,
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uncle that, auntie this. Awesome. Good job, babe. Dad comes home. Son, did you make $5? Yeah,
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daddy. Look at this. $5 bills. Dad grabs it. Boom. Throws in the fire. Why would you do that? You didn't
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make $5. How do you know? Trust me. I know. Tomorrow, you best make $5. Dad wakes up, goes
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to son. Hey, $5 today. Goes to work. Mom, no. Begging, no. And she goes across the street to
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say, man, can I work for you? I need to make $5. I said, or else my dad's going to chew
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me out. He said, I can't give you $5, but I give you a penny for each sandbag you move
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from here to over there. Only a penny, only a penny. This kid, 11, 12 years old, only moves
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150 sandbags. Gets $1.50 and change. Dad comes home. Son is sweaty, dirty hands. Says,
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son, did you make $5? He says, no. I made $1.50. Puts the money in dad's hands. Dad
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grabs the money, throws it in the fireplace. The son runs into the fireplace, starts picking
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up this money. Dad hugs him. He says, son, today I know for a fact you worked for that
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$1.50. You know why? Because you were willing to burn your hands because you paid the price
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for this. You're officially a man. I am so proud of you. I think we need to start believing
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in the American people that you are better than this. You can figure out a way to make
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money. If you're not in a good situation to have kids, don't have kids. I think too many
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people are pressured to have kids simply because of these bogus incentive programs that we have.
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If we start believing in our people, we change the incentive programs, we challenge our guys
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to start dreaming again, having value in themselves again. Eventually, one day we're going to wake
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up realizing we don't need to waste all our money, your money, my money, 52% on people
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and steal their dreams away from them. Instead, we've developed a whole new generation of leaders
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and America's future looks bright. If you got value out of this video, give it a thumbs up,
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subscribe to the channel, and I got another video for you. If you've never watched the
00:18:44.540
history of social security, click here to watch it. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.