microsoft ceo but we haven't seen a ceo chomping down on facebook. >> i'm about the next show. neil, take it away. who needs a paycheck from work when staying at home might work out to be a better deal? welcome everybody. welcome to have you. good luck getting folks to leave home. not if a new study says welfare related benefits are topping $38,000 in several ates. that doesn't mean that everyone getting welfare is lazy. but i trust a good nanny can do th. the math doesn't make it all that compelling to get off the couch. to ben stein, melissa francis, along with adam lashisty. what do you make of this? >> i talked about this a long time. i've been blasted on comedy central for being heartless. the fact of the matter is i've seen it in my own eyes.

>> they figured out what we already know about you. >> john, go ahead. you were saying. >> the bottom line is it's just, listen, we should be making it where people are urged to get off welfare instead the idea of making it comfort for theab com. it's not the one where they pay for the house, food, rent, cell phone and sit at home and make a lot more money than people doing minimum wage jobs. it crushed the economy. >> it's tough to leave that. even if it isn't exactly the same, you have childcare issues. it doesn't have to be. it's daunting. >> in new york, especially. you receive the benefits, of course, you're not getting taxed. in new york, you have to make $21 an hour in order to take home the same amount of money as if you were on all these programs. and then i mean because they're

talking about a single mom with two kids, you also have to find someone to watch your kids. so it's just impossible. the real thing is then you have no incentive. how are you going to go from a total stand still of having no job at all to leaping up to a job where you make more than $21 an hour? that's impossible. >> you have to make sacrifice and transition. >> that's what people have to be incentivized to understand. the first step you take an economic hit. now you're in the system. now you work your way up the system. it's a hard sles pitch. >> whatever happened to the welfare to work program? >> welfare reform, right? in the early 1990s, you had all the great thinkers, people saying we need to chan the system. we need to incentivize people to go to work. deincentivize people to stay home and collect welfare. in five years, barack obama has essentially changed that. we are now going away from -- >> it's been going on through the bush administration as well. but i guess this time -- it's a

bipartisan sort of a rant here. benefits are out of control. ben stein, here's what i heard from a lot of folks who were noting fox is condemning this new trend. well, obviously for reason to dramatically hike if not double the minimum wage. what do you think of that? >> well, that's a good way to double the unemployment rate. i mean the situation is very difficult for poor people. we can just start at the beginning and say if you're a poor person, if you're a person who does not have much education or much ability to earn money, you're screwed no matter what you're doing. you're not going to live well on $38,000 a year. you're not going toive well on $21 an hour. you have to go back farther and start explaining to people they must get education. education is the capital from which people build careers, lives, homes, families. that somehow has to be drummed into people's heads. we don't know how to do it. >> we have to -- i don't think

we should be incentivizing people to do the stuff that puts them into welfare. >> having kids, starting a faly -- >> that's one of the problems. you get paid more money when you have more kids. >> go ahead. >> ben was starting to make an important point which is we sort of -- >> then i guess hedid. >> i'm going to finish. >> all right. >> we overgeneralize. ben said it's hard to have a good life on $38,000, especially in some of the states that we showed on screen. we're also overgeneralizing here. these programs are not a bed of roses. 's not like you sort of lounge around eating bon-bons. >> what, waunt many tow go out and do pushups every day? you get the money, dude. you have to enroll in the program. you have to participate. you have to check in, et cetera. >> oh, come on. >> if we're saying that our public policy should be to encourage people to work, to not

work, i completely agree. by the way, i think most people who were on welfare would rather have a job, would rather have that good feeling that you get from working. that's absolutely what we should encourage. >> i'll give you the benefit of the doubt. i hope that is the case. what worries me is we live in a society where at least some of the major protesters the las year have been for more government aid and benefits. and not for jobs. >> exactly. or to skew the pay system somehow so that the kid who drops out in tenth grade can be rewarded at the expense of someone who worked their way through college. i have to disagre with adam. the way it works, it's not just one person in the house over $38,000. there are two or three brothers and a mother. soon the household income gets around $70,000, $80,000. people can buy $200 sneakers. let's talk about the real world for a minute. deincentivize. i know too many people who dropped out of school won't take a job at mcdonald's. they tell me ft out. they want to work.

they want outlandish salaries. >> how difficult is it to get into the pgrams? >> you can get a new phone almost every month. go back to the program with a new cell phone. >> fill out a few papers. that's absurd. >> the bottom line is the benefits are very generous. they're getting more generous to adam's point. i don't think they're life sustaining. they're clearly not. i think it's very hard to breakaway when they get so generous and to your point on childcare issues, you actually can make a very good math argument not to, right? >> you can make a fantastic math gument not to. it's impossible to go from that stand still to having a job where you make more money. like everything else, it goes back to parents trying to keete kids the only way they get ahead and sustain a middle class life is to get throughout and get the first job and get promoted and get the n one and work their way up. they have to accept that no matter what you can get for free, it is not as much as can you do on your own. you have to be willing to work hard. >> i'm sorry, ben. charles wrote a brilliant thing

about this in his book and experience growing up in harlem. it does get to be a cycle, doesn't it? >> it's generational. it's a shame. 's sold as a way of caring for people when, in fact, at some point you're not caring for them because you're enabling something that -- see, the idea that people won't ever live the american dream or attempt to is heartbreaking. it is called subculture poverty. if you incentivize people to do things, they keep them in poverty. >> i know. but it's not realistic we're going to break this cycle any time soon. any time you talk about changing this, what are you going to take the food out of the single moms with kids? no one is ever in favor of. that any time you want to cut back on programs -- >> rudy ju lgiuliani did. >> so if that is the case then ben stein, where are we going with this? >> we're in real trouble. americans are not acquiring human capital in the form of education and skill sets to use

charles' very wonderful phrase that is going to build this country and build up self-esteem and self-worth of the people of this country. we have a whole culture that's not starving but it's starving forself-esteem. they resort to violence, drug addiction, premarital and extramarital sex. we have a whole culture that is just dying from lack of self-esteem and that's from lack of work. >> people like adam perpetuating it, right, adam? >> i know you don't want to comment on that for me. >> i don't, indeed. stick around, we're going to take a break. call the doctor. companies are already playing doctor and amputating the health benefits on their own and the ford gang says yours could be next. forget how much more you're paying for coverage. worry more whether you're even going to have coverage. that's coming up at the top of the hour. up next, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world stopped cold for three hours an.

>> we know, at least the nasdaq got ahead of naming its latest flubz. a flash reads. it sounds so much better than flash crash. this is still kind of sickening. i don't know of a three hour shutdown counts as a flash in anything or reassuring investors it could have been a whole lot worse. i don't know. not encouraging. >> this is really bad. the biggest culprit is the

securities and exchange commission which two, three years after the flash crash, remember that when prices floated and in 30 seconds. i don't remember how fast and how far. they've done almost nothing aboumarket structure. we have a market that is convoluted, makes no sense. it's mostly computers. they break down all the time. we have actually have many markets, not just two markets, so how do you know what is the real price of a stock? because they opened up the mark -- >> you have a circle of friends in this. the more you say this, it is a smaller and smaller circle. >> yeah. >> like two people on your rolodex. >> then i'm pissing them off. >> pretty much. >> you know, i wl say this though. the securities and exchange commission needs to step in right now. they need to step in and do a blue ribbon study about our markets and whether they're working, whether they're functional and whether they're good for the small investor. small investors are not engaged in this market not because of insider trading. they're worried about facebook blowing up or something like this. >> you have investors that you deal with this for a living.

do they come back, hey this is rigged against me? i don't -- i feel like i'm getting whipsawed? >> yeah. all of that -- i've always tried to say, listen, think of is in two different ways. there's a big difference between being an owner of a great american company and wall street and the shenanigan that's go on there. flash crash, insider trading, all that stuff. try not to let that impact you. to charlie's point, obviously, it does. but for me, i think the problem was after the fact. the nasdaq had -- there -- they weren't contrite at all. they were like so what? we kept it closed for three hours. the big boys knew what we were doing. no, we're not putting in more money. you are serious? >> you know, it's like the captain of the titanic saying yeah but we missed the big glacier. >> yeah. >> i mean a lot of us were tracking them. they went radio silent half way through. they weren't providing information. i had the ceo of old bank corp right afterwards. he had just switched his company

to the nasdaq from wednesday when this happened. he said he wasn't worried which is great for a banker. you want them to be solid and calm. but at the same time, you know, he said he received one e-mail, maybe two e-mails from the nasdaq saying don't worry. we're working on it. it's going to be okay. no further informati beyond that. i mean they really went silent both to the media and then also to the people that are paying them fees to have their stock listed. that gets to the issue. so many of the names that dominate nasdaq are big technology names and name you have writtenextensively about, apples and microsofts and the googles and on and on. they were kind of frozen in time. trading was all but halted. i'm wonderg whether it affected them as well. callers interested in those stocks, is there a sense that you can't always trade them cleanly, whatever? >> i think this points out the pros and cons of technology. technology lowered the barriers for all sorts of investors to be able to trade.

but it doesn't -- when it goes down, it really goes down. the ultimate hits are not going to go down like that. i think charlie is absolutely right. the sec totally failed. nasdaq needs to have a fail-safe system. they don't. they shouldn't be allowed to operate until they do. >> you know, ben stein, i do remember the days when you look at the floor of the stock stock and it's crowded with people. now it's tumbleweeds. so i'm wondering what happened? and is that the problem? have we taken the human out of it and made it so high-tech that it's high problem? >> the only way this would happen if there was the open crisis on live hoom an trades and if they all ate the same fish for lunch. but the bad thing is -- the question you have to ask is -- they could have. no question. how much better off are we with the computer system? i don't know that there's been

any doubt showing we are better. there is more liquidity. but for the long run, stocks are certainly a heck of a lot better. >> there's more liquidity. >> but does it inhibit trade? obviously you don't see it in volumes. but could it inhibit trade? >> yeah. listen, it could be really bad. by the way, studies are all over the place on just net-net which is better, humans or computers? they say more liquidity, you can trade easier. so it's better. execution and all these other factors go into what a stock price is. i will say this. i think the nasdaq did a great job with the big guys. they did a great job talking to wall street. they did a great job with regulators. they kind of dealt with the issue pretty well, like put a cork in it, so to speak. they dealt with their very customers very well. >> i guess -- i don't know that -- we were talking, too. he got two e-mails. >> i guarantee the apple people were like on t phone with them. >> i'm telling you the computer

has just started taking over. >> it hurts the retail guy. that's who really gets screwed. the average investor sits back and says why am i in stocks? by the way, an average investor that stayed out of stocks, i'm not a guy that pumps stocks up. it doesn't take a rocket scientists to figure out it went three or four years. if you were out of it, you missed making a lot of money. >> yeah. >> we like to have people think at home it does take a rocket scientists. scientists. test.

♪ ♪ do you want to save the world? you're at georgia tech. you can do that. if you want to build the ironman suit, you're at georgia tech. you can do that. if you want to place music during your convocation speech, like a badass, you're at georgia tech. we can do that! i am doing that!

>> neil: you know, no matter how many times i hear, that i love it. days after nick's epic welcome to college speech went viral, he went national. naturally talking to me first. for his television interview. what was your assignment here? to help the freshmen to prepare them for life at georgia tech was like? what did the administrators think you were going to do? >> well, yeah, i mean coming in, these freshmen had just gonehrough an exhausting but not necessarily exciting day. from it was my job to pump them up, get them excited about why they were here. >> neil: a quick p.s. to that, i got hundreds of e-mails to folks after that, neil, mini-me. i don't need that. okay. i didn't look like that when -- actually, he was a lot more handsome. charles, good lesson for dc, anyone in leadership? >> anyone in leadership, but especially in dc. whenever someone in washington speaks, we can't, they won't.

it's their fault. it's their fault. i got to tell you, they should have been in the front row. everyone watching in dc. >> neil: maybe the key was the background music. >> the key was the music. somebody like this, he is not going to washington to be a politician. he will sell something worthless on late night tv and make millions. >> neil: he has no interest, i asked him that, no interest in politics. but we did have engineering major in the white house, jimmy carter. my point is that might be something to this. what do you think? >> talk is cheap. >> oh! >> no, no. >> neil: didn't you used to write speeches, young man? >> i did write a lot of speeches. th's how i know that talk is cheap. >> neil: you never set it to music. >> i never set it to music. this guy is inspiring entertainer, i would love to see him on tv, love to see him his own show. amusing guy. he reminds me a famous

old-time one marjo. god bless him for his speaking ability. it says nothing about the future of this country. >> the fact he goes to georgia tech and he's in the engineering school. >> i found this guy so incredibly annoying. >> what? charlie, c'mon. >> as a freshman, i would have thrown an orange at him. >> neil: adam, as a fellow nerd, only slightly older than this young man, what do you think? >> it's so funny to me, most of you criticize barack obama for giving lofty speeches, but we're celebrating this kid. i'm with charlie. >> i'm not celebrating him. i >> i found him anothing -- annoying. >> neil: hello. that will do it here, blessedly. i want to thank charlie an melissa. >> i'm a nerd and i love that. >> neil: you're not a nerd. >> i am! >> neil: all right. up next, stocks are rocking

for the year. even after getting rocked this week. time to rock with our gang's

>> neil: rocketing through some play it safe stocks right now. charles, what do you got? >> for the next five years, boeing is one of the safer stocks out there. >> neil: adam, what do you think? >> s-dog. it my micks the ultra safe dogs of the dow. >> neil: ben?

>> hateris financialment hammered like crazy. underpriced at this point. >> neil: thank you. we rocket through that. get in here because the cost of freedom continues now on fox. ♪ ♪ if you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. >> well, apparently not everyone. this week, shipping giant ups and the university of virginia announcing that they are dropping coverage for thousands of workers, thousands, all because of the healthcare law. it could get worse. a new survey shows that 40% of companies are planning to change their insurance plans next year. because of the new law. so, are more americans going to lose benefits despite ma the president said? hi, even. i'm liz mcdonald in for david asman. good to be wi you this morning. welcome to "forbes on fox." steve forbes, rick, rich carl,