WEBVTT NOTE Poverty 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Let's talk about poverty. 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.500 Nearly everyone today is concerned about this question of poverty. 3 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:08.500 We hear it on every hand. 4 00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:13.000 There are people around this country who are not getting enough to eat. 5 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:15.000 They don't have enough money. 6 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:17.000 They may not have a job. 7 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:19.500 Hands may be turned against them. 8 00:00:19.500 --> 00:00:27.000 The conditions they face are unpleasant, unsatisfactory, and sometimes downright tragic. 9 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.000 The situation is real. 10 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:39.040 There is poverty in the land, but before we start aiming at possible errors that exist 11 00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:43.400 in our society, perhaps we ought to take a good look at this to see just what it is we're 12 00:00:43.400 --> 00:00:50.400 talking about when we talk about poverty. In a sense, you know, every man is impoverished, 13 00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:58.100 and in a sense every man has wealth of certain types. Poverty is an imprecise word. When 14 00:00:58.100 --> 00:01:05.660 When we say a person is poor, what do we really mean? As poor as what? Is there any absolute 15 00:01:05.660 --> 00:01:17.140 standard? No, there isn't. Poverty usually invokes an idea of great lack of privation 16 00:01:17.140 --> 00:01:23.020 of going without, and we have that kind of poverty. That is true. But in a very real 17 00:01:23.020 --> 00:01:30.100 In a sense, any person who is trying to do something and finds force used to prevent 18 00:01:30.100 --> 00:01:36.620 him has been impoverished by that action even though he may have many dollars and still 19 00:01:36.620 --> 00:01:45.300 can't get what he wants. Because poverty is, in a sense, an impoverishment of the person. 20 00:01:45.300 --> 00:01:50.140 But let's talk about it both philosophically and economically, and let's take the economic 21 00:01:50.140 --> 00:01:57.920 condition first. I suppose many people today think that poverty is merely a lack of money, 22 00:01:57.920 --> 00:02:02.740 and that if people had enough money, that would probably solve the problem, and the 23 00:02:02.740 --> 00:02:07.460 people having that immediate lack, if they just had more money given to them, then the 24 00:02:07.460 --> 00:02:15.420 problem would be resolved. This is very far from the case. It's very far from being true. 25 00:02:15.420 --> 00:02:20.100 Many people may think that way, but that doesn't make it accurate. It doesn't make it correct. 26 00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:27.100 You and I, as human beings, require certain goods and services in order to stay alive. 27 00:02:27.100 --> 00:02:41.100 And interestingly, money is only a medium of exchange and is of no practical value unless there are goods and services in existence for which we can exchange the money. 28 00:02:41.100 --> 00:02:47.100 Thus, if a person had a lot of money, say, imagine someone on an island or out in the desert, 29 00:02:47.100 --> 00:02:52.300 and he has a big stack of gold that he may have uncovered there. He's got thousands and thousands 30 00:02:52.300 --> 00:02:58.300 of dollars. That money is of no particular value. This man would still be a poor man, 31 00:02:58.860 --> 00:03:05.820 even though he has all this money, unless he could trade it for something else that he needed and 32 00:03:05.820 --> 00:03:13.100 wanted more. So the important thing is to realize that we are talking in an imprecise area when 33 00:03:13.100 --> 00:03:20.700 When we're talking about poverty and begin by realizing that dollars in themselves will 34 00:03:20.700 --> 00:03:30.120 not solve anything. They have to be dollars related to other things. Now, what is obviously 35 00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:36.100 meant when we talk about poverty? We're talking about the conditions of people. Sometimes 36 00:03:36.100 --> 00:03:43.080 they are black, sometimes they are Mexican-American, American-Indian, possibly some minority, 37 00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:49.160 group that I haven't mentioned, or possibly just people belonging to the majority. They 38 00:03:49.160 --> 00:03:54.280 can all have difficult times. Anybody can have a difficult situation. And we usually 39 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:58.880 think of it as occurring when this person doesn't have enough food to eat, a place 40 00:03:58.880 --> 00:04:05.260 to stay, the proper clothing, the proper medical treatment, and so on. That's really what we're 41 00:04:05.260 --> 00:04:11.260 talking about when we say poverty. I think we usually are. That's what we mean to imply. 42 00:04:11.260 --> 00:04:15.980 When we say those people are poor, what we are really saying is they don't have enough 43 00:04:15.980 --> 00:04:21.920 of these basic things in order to get along on, and we wish very sincerely that they had 44 00:04:21.920 --> 00:04:29.260 more of these things. Well, now it is a fact that the things that those people need, and 45 00:04:29.260 --> 00:04:37.340 that all of us need, are not created out of nothing. Wishing for them to come into existence 46 00:04:37.340 --> 00:04:41.660 does not solve anybody's poverty problem. 47 00:04:41.660 --> 00:04:46.420 If we are going to have the goods and the services, I'm speaking here now, of the food, 48 00:04:46.420 --> 00:04:52.220 the clothing, the shelter, the medical attention, etc., if we are going to have those things 49 00:04:52.220 --> 00:04:58.760 for people who don't have them, they are going to have to be produced somewhere by somebody. 50 00:04:58.760 --> 00:05:04.260 They don't grow on trees, they don't arrive by magic, somebody has to bring them into 51 00:05:04.260 --> 00:05:11.140 in existence. And that is what we're all trying to do, or many of us are trying to do. Now, 52 00:05:11.140 --> 00:05:19.180 we have in this country a major obstacle to curing the poverty problem, and that is the 53 00:05:19.180 --> 00:05:26.420 government. The government is without a doubt the biggest obstacle that we have to overcome 54 00:05:26.420 --> 00:05:30.940 in trying to deal with this problem where it does exist. 55 00:05:30.940 --> 00:05:37.880 Let me point out something to you. A matter of, say, 200 years ago, we had not yet had 56 00:05:37.880 --> 00:05:45.360 an industrial revolution anywhere in the world. At that time, the standard of living for anyone 57 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:54.180 in the world was incredibly below where most of our standards are today in this country. 58 00:05:54.180 --> 00:06:02.180 It would have been a rare thing, just as recently as 200 years ago, for even what we would think 59 00:06:02.180 --> 00:06:10.000 of as a wealthy man, to have a good meal, a warm room to stay in, a comfortable bed, 60 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:14.080 or anything like what we think of today as adequate medical attention. 61 00:06:14.080 --> 00:06:15.700 Those things simply weren't available. 62 00:06:15.700 --> 00:06:19.220 They weren't available because they hadn't been produced. 63 00:06:19.220 --> 00:06:21.060 And we got started producing them. 64 00:06:21.060 --> 00:06:29.000 We suddenly learned how not to do things by hand, but to apply power to processes of production, 65 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:35.580 and as we began doing that, we began to multiply the amount of food, clothing, shelter and 66 00:06:35.580 --> 00:06:40.820 other things that we could have, and then guess what happened? The government stepped 67 00:06:40.820 --> 00:06:47.440 in and began to regulate it, and as they began to regulate, they began to reduce the amount 68 00:06:47.440 --> 00:06:53.440 of Goods and Services that were available. And so the great breakthrough that began to 69 00:06:53.440 --> 00:07:02.920 occur along about 1760 has never been permitted to run its full course. And instances of this 70 00:07:02.920 --> 00:07:10.440 crop up all the time today. For example, take this country right now. In this country, according 71 00:07:10.440 --> 00:07:23.360 The United States government gets 34% of all its taxes from people who are earning less 72 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:31.420 than $3,000 a year. That's right. 34% of its total income comes from people who are 73 00:07:31.420 --> 00:07:39.320 earning less than $3,000. Now, what does that do? That inhibits those people in this low 74 00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:46.320 of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money 75 00:08:09.320 --> 00:08:28.320 Take another situation that exists in this country. Right now, for instance, it is virtually impossible for certain persons in minority groups to get jobs at all because the union keeps them out. 76 00:08:28.320 --> 00:08:36.400 The union has a closed door policy so that only certain persons can get in, and many 77 00:08:36.400 --> 00:08:41.240 of them have actual policies which exclude members of certain minority groups, including 78 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:43.900 blacks, Mexican Americans, and so on. 79 00:08:43.900 --> 00:08:48.040 And so here are the people that need jobs and could benefit by them, but here you have 80 00:08:48.040 --> 00:08:51.340 the union, and guess why the union can get away with it? 81 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:55.880 The union can get away with it because it is essentially backed by the government in 82 00:08:55.880 --> 00:08:57.060 these policies. 83 00:08:57.060 --> 00:09:06.300 So here is another example of it. Here is another way in which the government is hampering 84 00:09:06.300 --> 00:09:14.460 the solution that we need to find in this area. It has passed a number of laws, and 85 00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:20.820 they amend them and then pass them over again, called minimum wage laws. Now this establishes 86 00:09:20.820 --> 00:09:29.400 a minimum wage at a specified level, and it automatically means that poor people who cannot 87 00:09:29.400 --> 00:09:35.440 produce above or up to the level of the minimum wage are not going to be able to get a job 88 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:36.440 at all. 89 00:09:36.440 --> 00:09:42.200 For instance, if the minimum wage is set by the government at $1.60 an hour, let's say, 90 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:49.240 just for saying, and we have a man here who could produce up to the value of a dollar 91 00:10:19.240 --> 00:10:25.760 This is the government's operation that does this. Here are the kind of problems that we 92 00:10:25.760 --> 00:10:32.720 run into. Take another area that the government has gotten into, the area of farm subsidies. 93 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:37.940 We have heard, for instance, how the government has wanted to help the little farmer. And 94 00:10:37.940 --> 00:10:42.680 let me assume that there are people in government who have very good hearts and very good intentions. 95 00:10:42.680 --> 00:10:47.560 And so they've started out to help the little farmer with subsidy of one sort or another. 96 00:10:47.560 --> 00:11:01.560 The man with thousands and thousands of acres is so much so, in fact, that the farm population 97 00:11:01.560 --> 00:11:06.440 is leaving the rural areas, as you know, and moving into the urban areas, and the farm 98 00:11:06.440 --> 00:11:11.540 areas are becoming more and more consolidated with bigger and bigger farms, and they get 99 00:11:11.540 --> 00:11:15.380 government support for growing things, for not growing things, and for following the 100 00:11:15.380 --> 00:11:17.280 government rules all the way down the line. 101 00:11:17.280 --> 00:11:23.460 So you have this type of thing which creates an areas of poverty that allegedly the government 102 00:11:23.460 --> 00:11:29.440 is supposed to be trying to cure and yet this is the result. What we are going to have to 103 00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:34.380 understand if we are going to ever get to the place where we're going to deal with poverty 104 00:11:34.380 --> 00:11:42.240 intelligently is this. We are going to have to realize that the chains and restraints 105 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:51.300 must come off the marketplace. The only way that poverty can really be cured is by processes 106 00:11:51.300 --> 00:11:54.400 relating to human liberty. 107 00:11:54.400 --> 00:12:00.620 You and I are not in any position to say what another man's wealth may be. People value 108 00:12:00.620 --> 00:12:06.800 things differently. Some men would find great wealth in having leisure time, the ability 109 00:12:06.800 --> 00:12:13.600 to go out and look at a sunset or to read a book. And to them, that is wealth. If you 110 00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:17.880 take that away from them, they would be poor indeed, even though they might have a great 111 00:12:17.880 --> 00:12:23.220 deal of money. Other people would be interested in money and would care less about a sunset. 112 00:12:23.220 --> 00:12:29.600 This is a matter of human individual judgment and value. And, of course, if we are going 113 00:12:29.600 --> 00:12:37.080 In order to try to do what we can about poverty, we must free up humanity so that individuals 114 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:44.280 can, without authoritarian restraints placed upon them, pursue their own ideas of what 115 00:12:44.280 --> 00:12:50.400 would be enriching for them. And thus we can move toward an area of enrichment rather than 116 00:12:50.400 --> 00:12:57.280 toward this business of impoverishment. I'd like to suggest, in fact, that the only real 117 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:03.840 The real poverty we have is a kind of spiritual poverty, the kind of poverty that you get 118 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:09.440 when you are thwarted, when you want to do something, that what you want to do is worthwhile, 119 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:15.140 and then for some reason someone else, other than yourself, imposes arbitrary rules and 120 00:13:15.140 --> 00:13:19.940 restraints on you, takes your money, whether you have a great deal or a little, inhibits 121 00:13:19.940 --> 00:13:25.900 your actions, punishes you, locks you up or does something, so that you cannot do what 122 00:13:25.900 --> 00:13:32.580 What do you want to do? There is the impoverishment of human beings, of the human spirit. It 123 00:13:32.580 --> 00:13:38.900 is the impoverishment that occurs when people impose their wills on other people for any 124 00:13:38.900 --> 00:13:44.540 reason whatever. And the imposition, of course, is done by force or the threat of force. 125 00:13:44.540 --> 00:13:51.820 If we are going to move toward a rich country, it is going to have to be rich in many ways, 126 00:13:51.820 --> 00:13:57.280 not merely in the way that some economic or political czar would dictate, and those riches 127 00:13:57.280 --> 00:14:04.600 will be found in the voluntary actions that individuals can take when they are left alone 128 00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:09.400 to pursue whatever it is that they want to pursue. 129 00:14:09.400 --> 00:14:14.440 This is one of the problems we have in dealing with poverty. I know many young people today 130 00:14:14.440 --> 00:14:21.960 who would in fact favor a free market, would like to believe in private ownership of property 131 00:14:22.520 --> 00:14:29.960 and the right of a man to manage his own property, but when they contact other men who are supposed 132 00:14:29.960 --> 00:14:35.960 to be examples in this area, they find that these other men do not want to permit them 133 00:14:36.680 --> 00:14:43.960 to dress as they please, to think as they please, to act as they please, and are in essence 134 00:14:44.440 --> 00:14:51.600 Making these young people poor by imposing on them and substituting another set of values 135 00:14:51.600 --> 00:14:54.280 which are foreign to the young people. 136 00:14:54.280 --> 00:14:58.040 The same thing works in reverse, where you see it happen in reverse. 137 00:14:58.040 --> 00:15:03.040 In other words, the older people likewise are impoverished when others, whether they 138 00:15:03.040 --> 00:15:10.120 are young or old, step in and won't let them do what they want to do with what is theirs, 139 00:15:10.120 --> 00:15:15.780 Their person, their property, their clothing, their lifestyle, their money, whatever it 140 00:15:15.780 --> 00:15:25.260 is, impoverishment comes from imposed restraints on a free being. Now that's impoverishment. 141 00:15:25.260 --> 00:15:29.820 And if we're going to get rid of it, we're going to have to learn the lesson of letting 142 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:36.200 people alone and letting them, if I may say it, do their own thing in their own way so 143 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:46.560 Getting back again to the economic aspects of it. It's extremely important that we realize 144 00:15:46.560 --> 00:15:57.000 that the industrial revolution and the accompanying revolution in automation and in computerization 145 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:02.920 and so on that we have now, that these things have never been permitted up to date to run 146 00:16:02.920 --> 00:16:09.980 their full course. The government continues to step in and hamper and tie our hands and 147 00:16:09.980 --> 00:16:15.600 prevent the creation of the wealth, even the material wealth such as the food and the clothing 148 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:21.880 and so on, that we could produce if we were left free to do it. We are going to have to 149 00:16:21.880 --> 00:16:28.780 somehow convince a great many people that we will have a better world and one that is 150 00:16:28.780 --> 00:16:34.780 is filled with more riches of every kind, including the economic riches that we want. 151 00:16:34.780 --> 00:16:40.220 When we learn to let people establish their own incentives, to take the restraints off 152 00:16:40.220 --> 00:16:45.180 them so that people can produce and can produce profitably, so we don't try to limit the 153 00:16:45.180 --> 00:16:51.060 amount of profit that a person can make in any area, we simply open it up and believe 154 00:16:51.060 --> 00:17:03.580 Only a truly libertarian approach such as I am outlining is ever going to have any effect 155 00:17:03.580 --> 00:17:12.540 on the poor. The idea that you can take money or property from someone and then hand it 156 00:17:12.540 --> 00:17:20.500 to someone else and by this process cure poverty is completely mistaken. There is a total amount 157 00:17:20.500 --> 00:17:23.500 There is a lot of wealth in the world at any given instant. 158 00:17:23.500 --> 00:17:26.400 Certain people have more, other people have less. 159 00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:30.980 But if you take and simply shift it, you take it out of the hands of A and put some of it 160 00:17:30.980 --> 00:17:35.660 into the hands of B, you are still dealing with the same total amount of wealth. 161 00:17:35.660 --> 00:17:39.460 There has been no wealth produced and there has been no poverty dealt with. 162 00:17:39.460 --> 00:17:44.480 All that has happened is that you have shifted some things around, but the total remains 163 00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:45.700 the same. 164 00:17:45.700 --> 00:17:48.020 Now consider this point. 165 00:17:48.020 --> 00:17:54.520 If you have a large group of people who are very productive and you begin taking their 166 00:17:54.520 --> 00:18:00.680 money and their property away from them and inhibiting their actions, reducing the amount 167 00:18:00.680 --> 00:18:05.740 of profits that they can make by productive action, they are going to be less and less 168 00:18:05.740 --> 00:18:09.460 interested in producing, obviously. 169 00:18:09.460 --> 00:18:13.020 If there's no incentive for them to do it, why should they do it? 170 00:18:13.020 --> 00:18:19.980 So that means that if you begin inhibiting productive people, there will be less total 171 00:18:19.980 --> 00:18:20.980 production. 172 00:18:20.980 --> 00:18:27.260 If at the same time you turn around and take persons who at the moment may not be productive 173 00:18:27.260 --> 00:18:33.500 in spite of their wishes to be, but you now take wealth from those who have produced and 174 00:18:33.500 --> 00:18:38.700 you channel it into the hands of those who are at this time not producing, what you do 175 00:18:38.700 --> 00:18:44.060 is you take the existing amount of wealth and you place it out at a level where it can 176 00:18:44.060 --> 00:18:51.780 be consumed more rapidly. That does not solve poverty. That increases poverty and spreads 177 00:18:51.780 --> 00:18:57.460 it out farther. And that is precisely what we have been doing in this country thanks 178 00:18:57.460 --> 00:19:02.820 to government interference. The government actively began to get into this problem of 179 00:19:02.820 --> 00:19:09.500 of Dealing with Poverty in the 1930s during the Great Depression, and that was their solution. 180 00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:17.540 At that time, we had a relatively few truly impoverished people. I happen to know because 181 00:19:17.540 --> 00:19:25.220 I was one of them myself. However, at beginning at that time, the government began to try 182 00:19:25.220 --> 00:19:32.740 to solve the poverty problem by redistributing the wealth. Now what is the situation today? 183 00:19:32.740 --> 00:19:42.740 Let me tell you that today, right now in this country, we have many more impoverished persons than we had back in the 1930s. 184 00:19:42.740 --> 00:19:52.740 Many more. And in a great many instances, the conditions that these poor people face are more serious than they were before. 185 00:19:52.740 --> 00:20:14.740 The government has spent a hundred billion dollars in solving or trying to solve the poverty problem through the program of redistributing the wealth, and all it has accomplished is that it has redistributed the poverty, and there's more poverty spread out for more people than was true when they started. 186 00:20:14.740 --> 00:20:19.120 Now clearly that's wrong, we're clearly going in the wrong direction. 187 00:20:19.120 --> 00:20:25.840 The business of redistributing does not solve a problem, it merely redistributes the problem. 188 00:20:25.840 --> 00:20:30.160 Now if you're going to solve the problem, you have to get at it another way. 189 00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:35.740 And the only way to do it is, I believe, the libertarian approach to help the poor. 190 00:20:35.740 --> 00:20:37.500 And what is that? 191 00:20:37.500 --> 00:20:44.460 You stop inhibiting them, open the doors and let them produce. 192 00:20:44.460 --> 00:20:51.700 They want to. They are good producers. You know, we somehow failed to realize that everything 193 00:20:51.700 --> 00:20:59.540 we have in this country came as a result of poor people who were willing to deal with 194 00:20:59.540 --> 00:21:09.460 absolutely bare-bored natural resources. They had nothing to fall back on, and they produced 195 00:21:09.460 --> 00:21:12.900 because they were not inhibited. Now that's how we got started. 196 00:21:13.780 --> 00:21:21.300 Many people think that poverty somehow helps to ensure poverty. It doesn't if government stays 197 00:21:21.300 --> 00:21:28.500 out of it. Poverty only, as a matter of fact, helps to stimulate the idea of riches. The man 198 00:21:28.500 --> 00:21:34.980 who is poor, if you leave him alone, is very apt to become the richest man because he's got more 199 00:22:04.980 --> 00:22:10.460 One of the very important things is to permit the profit motive to function freely, because 200 00:22:10.460 --> 00:22:16.120 that's the thing that will inspire the very poor to make maximum effort. 201 00:22:16.120 --> 00:22:22.500 It really is discouraging, whether you're poor or semi-poor, to know that the harder 202 00:22:22.500 --> 00:22:28.260 you work, the less you're going to have as a reward. 203 00:22:28.260 --> 00:22:29.820 That's not very good, is it? 204 00:22:29.820 --> 00:22:33.300 And this is the kind of thing that government does to us. 205 00:22:33.300 --> 00:22:39.140 comes in and prevents us from doing our best, it inhibits our action, deprives us of our 206 00:22:39.140 --> 00:22:44.540 profits, regulates what we can do, interferes with our choices, dominates us and then punishes 207 00:22:44.540 --> 00:22:52.060 us and then says, we're curing poverty. Well, obviously, this is the problem. 208 00:22:52.060 --> 00:22:59.260 Let me give you a couple of other ideas that are important here. The government always 209 00:22:59.260 --> 00:23:06.840 tries when it's dealing with a problem to centralize it and to put it in ever larger 210 00:23:06.840 --> 00:23:13.700 and larger bureaucratic combines. Today, for instance, when it comes to welfare, we have 211 00:23:13.700 --> 00:23:19.520 moved out of the local areas and we're trying to consolidate it at first at state level 212 00:23:19.520 --> 00:23:25.580 and then at the national level. This is exactly the reverse of the methods that should be 213 00:23:25.580 --> 00:23:26.580 be followed. 214 00:23:26.580 --> 00:23:30.780 And please don't think now that I'm suggesting that the government could do it right, even 215 00:23:30.780 --> 00:23:34.820 if it tried to, because I'm not trying to suggest that. 216 00:23:34.820 --> 00:23:41.580 I'm just trying to show that the natural tendency of the state is to take a bad matter and make 217 00:23:41.580 --> 00:23:50.740 it increasingly worse so the condition is compounded, the problem just multiplies and 218 00:23:50.740 --> 00:23:55.280 multiplies because that's the way government functions. 219 00:23:55.280 --> 00:24:04.100 operates with the idea that if you have a problem, it can be institutionalized and then 220 00:24:04.100 --> 00:24:11.660 it becomes an ongoing program. Now if you take the government out of the picture and 221 00:24:11.660 --> 00:24:18.940 you have a problem, you turn it over to the market and then the only ongoing program is 222 00:24:18.940 --> 00:24:28.120 a solution that can be developed and sold profitably by people who can be ingenious enough to come 223 00:24:28.120 --> 00:24:33.860 up with solutions, and they are always there to be had if the handcuffs are taken off and 224 00:24:33.860 --> 00:24:37.020 we can go to work on it. 225 00:24:37.020 --> 00:24:41.240 The poverty that we have in this country is a disgrace. 226 00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:43.220 It's a terrible condition. 227 00:24:43.220 --> 00:24:48.920 It is particularly bad when you stop for a moment and think that only a few decades ago 228 00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:54.540 So, this nation was clearly in the forefront of all the nations of the world when it came 229 00:24:54.540 --> 00:24:56.200 to an economy. 230 00:24:56.200 --> 00:25:02.200 We were the richest, we were the most plentiful in every area you could think of, and today 231 00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:05.840 that isn't necessarily true in many areas. 232 00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:10.720 And the reason isn't that we are not capable of production, the reason is that we have 233 00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:16.060 government dominating our lives, dominating our production, getting involved in trying 234 00:25:16.060 --> 00:25:34.580 One Christmas this occurred. 235 00:25:34.580 --> 00:25:42.740 A man had neglected to buy a Christmas present until the very last minute, and then just 236 00:25:42.740 --> 00:25:47.700 The day before Christmas, he remembered it, and he went down to the department store to 237 00:25:47.700 --> 00:25:53.000 get the gift that he wanted to get, and of course, there was an immense crowd there, 238 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:57.940 and he had to struggle to get through the crowd, and finally he did, and he selected 239 00:25:57.940 --> 00:26:03.080 a present, and he got the clerk to wrap it, and the clerk was all bedraggled, and her 240 00:26:03.080 --> 00:26:08.080 hair was frazzled, and the crowd was all around, and he finally looked at the curtain, and 241 00:26:08.080 --> 00:26:11.860 he said, boy, I've never seen a crowd like this, this is really something. 242 00:26:11.860 --> 00:26:15.420 And she looked up at him and there was a big smile on her face and she said, Yes, sir, 243 00:26:15.420 --> 00:26:18.180 this is the best day we've ever had. 244 00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:22.140 And he took the package and thanked her, and he paid for it, and then he went over to the 245 00:26:22.140 --> 00:26:23.860 post office to mail it. 246 00:26:23.860 --> 00:26:29.220 And of course, it's the same crowd, the people all over, pressing in on every side, and he 247 00:26:29.220 --> 00:26:33.540 got into the right line and had to wait his way up to the counter, and he finally got 248 00:26:33.540 --> 00:26:40.700 in front of the counter, and here was the clerk there, equally worn out and edgy. 249 00:26:40.700 --> 00:26:44.980 So he said to the clerk, boy, he said, this is certainly some crowd, and the clerk at 250 00:26:44.980 --> 00:26:49.140 the post office said, yeah, this is the worst day we've ever had. 251 00:26:49.140 --> 00:26:51.900 I think that illustrates the point. 252 00:26:51.900 --> 00:26:58.180 When we are dealing with the government, everything that comes up is a problem. 253 00:26:58.180 --> 00:27:02.220 It has to be institutionalized, and then you live with the problem. 254 00:27:02.220 --> 00:27:07.740 You got an ongoing program relating to the problem, and this provides jobs for politicians, 255 00:27:07.740 --> 00:27:12.700 And it provides all kinds of money and the rest of it to keep that thing going. 256 00:27:12.700 --> 00:27:16.180 There really isn't any particular point in solving it. 257 00:27:16.180 --> 00:27:21.020 But now when you don't have the government to work with and you go to the marketplace, 258 00:27:21.020 --> 00:27:27.040 well then there's a real incentive assuming a free market so that the problem can be solved. 259 00:27:27.040 --> 00:27:31.700 And somebody then will come forward and look at it as the girl did in the department store, 260 00:27:31.700 --> 00:27:37.180 that this is really a great opportunity and then something gets done. 261 00:27:37.180 --> 00:27:42.140 So when we're thinking about poverty, let's look at it and realize what we've got to 262 00:27:42.140 --> 00:27:48.380 contend with. It isn't merely a lack of money. It isn't a lack of food or other things that 263 00:27:48.380 --> 00:27:57.820 we couldn't provide. It is a lack of freedom. And a people who lose their freedom are impoverished, 264 00:27:57.820 --> 00:28:03.000 hopelessly impoverished, even though they have the wealth of creases stacked up beside 265 00:28:03.000 --> 00:28:12.280 and Their Doors. True riches are contained in the right of each man to follow his own 266 00:28:12.280 --> 00:28:16.400 star to make the best of himself that he can.