tv The Dylan Ratigan Show MSNBC March 1, 2012 1:00pm-2:00pm PST
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show. my temperature is rising. i need to take my medication and need to be back tomorrow. thank you. god bless you. >> show starts now. i want him to feel better. he's fine. good thursday afternoon to you. i am dylan ratigan. nice to see you. thank you for giving me a slice of your day. today's big story here, as you know, fixing things at six inches and at 60,000 feet. the big issues drawing money out of our country. none more notable than the china syndrome. from our trade agreements to its effect on currency manipulation, china continues to elevate as a hot talking point on the political campaign trail. >> we want to work with china to make sure that everybody is working by the same rules of the
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road. that includes ensuring that there is a balance trade flow. >> how has china been so successful in taking away our jobs? let me tell you how. by cheating. on day one, i will declare china a currency manipulator. >> we hear a lot about what we have to do to compete with china. what i have just laid out will compete with china. >> to have the most productive workers in the world to compete with china and india and win the competition. >> but remember, trade wars go back to the dutch, go back to marco polo. countries have been fiddling with things because it's a nice way to bring money to your country. as we explain in "greedy bastards," all of us have to understand what it is we have gotten ourselves into when dealing with china. this shoud not be a polarized campaign talking point of demons
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and villains and heroes. unfortunately, this is way too important and way too serious for our country to indulge in heros and villains. the fact of the matter is, if you live in america today, your fate is connect ed to china's fate. we need china. and china, by the way, needs us for employment, investment, and prosperity. we are their biggest market. they depend on us to repay their debt. which means that we have leverage to negotiate better terms in our trade deals. yes, china is manipulating its currency. that's a mathematical fact. yes, china is exploiting unfair trade practices and tax benefits to steal u.s. jobs. they tax imports at 25%. we tax theirs at 2.5%. we need to turn the energy we're wasting and demon miezing the villain of the day and use the
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obvious dysfunction in the relationship to compel all of us to develop real solutions at 60,000 feet for trade, fairness, and at six inches for immediate repair for the most damaged aspects of our economy. the u.s. relationship is one of the many topics that peter kernan is covering. a man who is as subtle as myself, "become become china's bitch." it's a pleasure to have you. congratulations on the book. first off, why did you write the book? what's the point you're trying to accomplish? >> i want to shock the american people. i went to the dylan ratigan school of delicacy when titling a book. i wanted to grab the american people and say are you focusing on what's going on here? >> what should i focus on? where do you want me to focus? >> when i was a boy, we had the
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finest mines in minds in the nation. our leadership was locked in on what the soviet union was doing. i want the american people to among all the other things insist that their leadership have an intelligent approach to a broad-gauge relationship with china. that means you have to insist we not vote another president in office that we have no idea where they stand on china. if you're talking to a senator or a congressman running -- >> where should they stand though? if you look at our thesis around here, you have to know where you are, where you're going, and how you're going to get there. you're saying america won't admit where it is with china. you're saying i'm here to tell you where we are. i'm here to tell you where we're going and how we're going to get there. where are we? and how are we going to get there? >> we're export finance tradeof.
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from them. we buy their stuff. they give jobs to their people and we give cheap products to our people. >> for the walmart shelves or whatever else, we're basically well positioned. that codependency right now works up to a point. but codependencies -- >> or at least a stability of some kind. >> correct. better put. but codependencies don't last forever. if they develop a middle class and turn that export monster to feed some of their local needs and consumers, they may not need to provide us with so much debt. and suddenly, we're kout of co-dependency. that's the bad time to negotiate. the time is now. >> when you're locked into this relationship, we have the leverage. they need us. we need them. what's the deal that you would advocate? and what do you believe are its benefits and what is the barrier to get it? >> let me give you an example of
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when it's working. gm clawed its way back to be the number one car selling company in the world. that was a great day for that company. and everyone who works there should feel terrific. they sold nine million cars. but the point is, of their cars, they sold 2.5 million cars in china. the way to deal with china is to say we're going to work out trade negotiations. we're not going to rip a band-aid off. >> it's like curing cancer with a knife. >> so my view is let's take a five-year plan and do 5% a year revaluation. we'll work together to merge into a better balance. >> i'm going to play china. no way. >> here's what we're going to do. we're not, in my opinion, going to get into a trade war. >> what are you going to do? i'm china and i'm telling you no. >> if you say no, we're going to begin to look for other ways to
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finance our business. we're going to look for other ways to finance our government. >> i'm going to give you a different answer. i'm china. i agree with you, but if i was to agree to your plan, that would make my unemployment in china start to rise and i can't deal with that. you're right. you're getting screwed over. we're making you our bitch. the only way to repair it is through this preparation. you're all rational. if i agree with you, and i'm china, you create a huge unemployment problem for me that i don't know how to deal with because i'm in this crazy government. >> i understand one of the things you're saying that's so smart is you can't photo shop the communist party out of this equation. if you're dealing with anybody in china, you're dealing with the communist party. >> do we have leverage to deal with that kind of a negotiator? >> i'm not sure there's a lot we
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can take away. there's not a lot we can say we won't do. >> what can we give them for them to work with us? >> i say let's codevelop products. a lot of the things manufacturing in china are things that will be put in cars and trucks in the u.s. we will work to do technology transfer to bring you up and help you know more sophisticated manufacturing techniques so we're giving you a little. >> so in exchange for the u.s. investment in our development, so to speak, we china will accept an incremental diminishment in the tax advantage we have enjoyed on a progression that's not so disruptive. >> the hawks have a bad idea. they will reevalthe currency. their currency will get strong. we will get weak. >> the whole thing will flip.
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>> the trouble is we haven't manufactured some of the goods in japan in 15 years. you can't turn that on in a dime. >> the last question. the little exploration we just role modelled on cable television, the probability that any of that would enter true political dialogue. >> here's how it might. one of the things where i think we'll have the biggest confrontation is over oil. there is thirsty for oil as we are. right now, for example, 20% of iranian oil goes to china. more of all of the eu countries combined. four countries by half of their oil. you're talking about india, china, japan, and turkey. >> finish that up for me. then i'll go. >> my view is that the way in is beginning to talk about oil-sharing deals.
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we need oil. we have access to oil. we could build a pipeline. >> to use our energy resources as leverage to incentivize them. all right. very interesting. congratulations on the book. i look forward to more of this conversation. >> it's a pleasure. >> for the radical center, we have got more with peter up right now at dylanratigan.com. i invite you to spend some time there. coming up here on the show, if you thought $5 they wanted to charge you at bank of america was bad, wait until you hear about the new fee structure. plus will you ever get to retire? we're cutting to the political rhetoric to get a reality check on what we're saving and what we're planning to spend. and students out occupying their colleges today. why they are doing it and talk to the lawmaker who says the students are right. thanks for babysitting the kids, brittany.
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i asked him about the controversial apology to afghans for the accidental burns of the korans. >> the reason that it was important is to save lives and make sure your troops there right now are not placed in further danger. >> you think it has improved? >> it calmed things down. >> that's the president telling abc news he believes that america's apology to afghans was effective. that statement is difficult to reconcile with the reality check, which is two weeks of
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protests and murderous bloodshed that continued into the day today. in fact, just hours after the words from our president, two more american soldiers were killed. also in retaliation for what's being portrayed by the u.s. as the accidental burning of the koran. that brings the numbers of americans now killed to six. the total death count more than 30. this is supposed to be the arab winter. the weather is terrible in afghanistan right now. it's difficult to engage in conflict. that's why they call it the summer fighting season. so with a targeted u.s. withdrawal date of 2014, why do we continue to wait to accelerate our withdrawal when it's very clear that the afghans want the u.s. gone right now? i want to bring in the mega panel. karen finney, susan del percio,
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and jimmy williams. who has worked in special forces, and the core issue by them is when it comes to american military strategy in afghanistan, the american government refuses to acknowledge where america is at, what the actual reality is, what the mission is, where we want to go, or how we're going to get there and the reason for that was best summarized by tony schaffer. take a listen. >> what we have is, like you said, a group of egotistical folks committed to a course of action, letting people die for the good of a political decision rather than on a practical one. >> we saw this coming out of context and conflict. the culture of political denial
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when the actual game doesn't reconcile with the viable strategy that's been agreed to in washington, d.c. >> but there was no real strategy to get out and decide what we were going to do. what needed to be accomplished. >> the only reason i'll disagree with that is we were going to secure the border between afghanistan and pakistan to prevent al qaeda from being able to encroach in pakistan in a way we can't chase them. what joe said was we are not doing any of that. everything we said we were going to do in the context of that mission isn't happening. what is happening is this sort of ambient, don't get killed strategy. we're going to put you in places where people want to kill you and not get killed. >> you might as well bring them home now. the fact is if we keep going the way we are, and maybe you bring them back to the borders. maybe you have other forces there. but right now, it's so hard to
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see blood, sweat, and tears of our soldiers to what end? it's really hard. >> that was kind of the congressman's point, jimmy. how do you explain the political denial, which is sort of this constant variable going back to vietnam. this is not a new phenomenon. there's a reason they call it the fog of war. >> every american president has to get to a point. jfk went through this, and they all do. you have to listen to the brass of the pentagon. at some point, after so many deaths or so many successes, that you either accept what they are saying as the god's honest truth, or you don't. how many more of our guys and gals have to die in afghanistan before we realize this is a ses pool? they don't want us there. they are going to keep killing us. they are going to disguise as
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friends and then blow our heads off. it's just a huge waste of time. it's time to pack up and get the hell out. >> walk me through the politics of this and what would be the resistance to accelerate a conversation knowing full well that you can't get out of there in a month. we know that. why would we not soon though? >> i think the first thing i can tell you having been in the white house that we have to accept that we don't really know what's going on in the ground. we know what's being said publically. we know that's not necessarily the same thing. for example, we don't know if perhaps conversations have been initiated to say, all right, if we were going to speed up the timeline, what would that look like? the second thing is as part of that, i think the president, you know, did what he felt he had to do. you still have peoples' lives on the ground you're worried about.
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the calculation generally is, what have we accomplished? what's left to be done? can it be accomplished? and then what would that look like if we started to phase out? not just because in this instance, and remember this stuff is complicated because it's not just about afghanistan. but if we pull out of afghanistan, what happens and what does that look like to the rest of the middle east? and i think the other thing that the president has talked about is a desire to transition from actual troops on the ground to the use of intelligence and other resources. so i think a lot of it is this tricky timing, but again, combined with other relationships. >> totally understood. and the biggest criticism was the failure to -- the b strategy that you just fined. his whole point was i was in congress when they did the surge with afghanistan. they told me what the a strategy was. it was border security and
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basically that's it. okay? then what happened is we gave up on that strategy. nobody has a "b" strategy they put out publically. hopefully there's one being rapidly developed. from our mouths to god's ears. but the criticism is the lack of those things. i want to move on to another subject that's equally irritating. >> some of the folks who have been there have come back with a different perspective. >> i fully acknowledge that. to the next subject we go. bank of america already made friends by offering a $5 atm fee for anybody who wanted to get their money out. that did so well for them with their diplomacy with the american people that they decided to up the game. you see the beautiful thing about being a monopoly business, because if nobody has any choice, you get to do whatever you want. that's why in america we're in favor of competition and we don't have giant monopoly
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businesses. because when we have those, not only do they want to charge you $5 access to your own money, but bank of america does things like this. charge you and everybody else in america $25 if you don't qualify as a profitable customer for the bank by virtue of having taken out a mortgage and pushing enough yield through the bank, which means they have set a price tag on all the people that aren't profitable to the bank. they have marked them with a $25 fee for being a loser who doesn't make bank of america money and because they have eliminated the choice, it's harder for you to figure out another bank to go to. any business should be free to do this. right? it's just a matter of whether you want manipulate the government to reduce the choice. >> the ceo of bank of america has publically stated that he has the right to make a profit for bank of america
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shareholders. and you would not disagree with that. i also have the right as a bank of america customer to take my money out of their stinking bank. so consequently, if they keep -- >> the banks have a federally-granted charter through which they are being given money for zero percent and consolidated assets in the banks reducing karen finney's choices for another bank by virtue of their corrupt relationship with our government. so it's fine, karen, if you want to change, but when i continue to bribe the government to reduce the number of choices for karen, it starts to get on your nerves, i imagine. >> number one, where's molly? and number two, i'm a bank of america customer. when i saw this topic, i will be banking at another bank. it's not a lot of money, but
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it's the one thing i can do. number three, congress should get on the stick about this. this is ridiculous. you have been talking about this for a long time. it's absolutely ridiculous. i'm over it. >> too much money from the banks. >> every time you get congress involved, they create at regulation and the banks are going to make their money. they are going to charge another fee somewhere else. unless you have drr $100,000 with them, they lose money. >> it's the 21st century. there's new financing mechanisms and new banks. instead of creating all these varieties of new banking choices for the karen and dylan and susan and everybody else, the government continues to reduce our banking choices while deliberately providing hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars in subsidies to the only banks that then provide the p t political fund k in this country so they can assign fees to us. i have no problems of raising fees. i have a problem with the corruption of the fundamental
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for thousands of students across the country, today marks day one of the american spring. this the scene captured by pictures uploaded to twirt as students across america protested and rallied against rising tuition and decreasing quality and job placement. it's a debt for diploma system that's failing our students where our greatest opportunity
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in the country lies. opportunities that are in our youth. check out this statistic. the u.s. education system now ranks 48th in the world in the subjects of math and science at a time when the rate of change is the highest it has ever been in the world's history when it comes to solving things in engineering. a poor mmpl mans that our specialist says we must address in order to capture those engineering leaps. those science leaps that are happening now at a pace that we could only have imagined a few years ago. of course, doing this gets us closer to the 30 million jobs we need. joining us is representative edie bernice from texas. why are you supportive of the protests on the cost of education, congresswoman? >> i'm supportive because every
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young person needs access to a good, quality education. and the prices have gone up. and the quality has gone down. not everywhere, but generally across the board, that's what's happening. >> there's an interesting dynamic in this country right now where either private tuition money is being spent, private loan money is being borrowed or spent, or public taxpayer money is being spent on all these colleges. it either comes from the taxpayer or individual or the student who borrowed from a bank. it gets spent wherever it gets spent. those prices are going up. we know it. at the same time, the cost of learning, the available information, the academy and the ted talks, all these things are collapsing. the ability to learn has never been so spectacular or so cheap. and yet, the key variable, which is what are you spending this
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money on? whatever it is, the students, the banks, and the taxpayer are not given transparency as to what the money is spent on that the schools are given. why is that? >> well, it is important that we have transparency. and we don't have the transparency that we need at this time. we need more and more. the taxpayers want us to be accountable. education starts k-12. then into college. it costs a great deal more to go to college. no matter what college you attend. and i'm not sure how much of that money is going into very quality teachers. we have not paid our teachers well enough over the years, so we're not attracting the most qualified teachers to our
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classrooms. >> as you in the government, aren't you in a position to advocate to force transparency for an educational institution that takes money? if you want to get the tax benefit or student loan, you have got to disclose how you spend the money. don't you guys have the leverage? >> we have asked. we don't have the leverage and we'd like to have the leverage. we have many representatives of these institutions that lobby against having a great deal of transparency. i think that the public has a right to know where that tax money is going. we know when it goes to certain institutions, but we don't know exactly what it's being spent for. however, we try to make corrections in the system by changing the way the loans can be made to our students cutting
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down some of the interests because the students get out of college now and they know $50,000. and they can't get a job. and so we're trying very hard to build more accountability into the systems and take the profit out of it for the institutions that lend the money that could care less how the students do. >> jimmy? karen? >> when we did no child left behind, that the former senator ted kennedy and now speaker john boehner wrote together, we actually did a bill that said we're going to test each of these kids at different levels. then we did something remarkably stupid. we didn't put any money into the schools to teach the children to take the tests. is it any wonder that we now have kids -- the ones that can graduate from high school -- walking into colleges and
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universities across the country. they can't write. they can't add. and where's the burden now? it's on the freshman college professors having to teach and do what should have been done in high school. isn't this a self-perpetuating system that's just a rabbit hole that's not going to work? and now we rank 47th. >> well, let me say that when leave no child left behind came along, it was never implemented well. it was never implemented to the agree of expectations. however, the kids that are graduating now came along before leave no child behind. but it is true. our young people are graduating from high school with many deficits going into college where they are expected to keep up. and most of the time, they cannot because they have no had the preparation. and that's the reason they don't stay in the same courses. they are encouraged to go to some of the courses that don't
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require as much action or work or effort. and therefore, we're losing many talents from the same areas because they go to the college level inadequately prepared. >> congresswoman, thank you for the time. thank you for the advocacy. put the screws to them. let's see where they are spending that money. i don't care about the lobbyists. we want to know how they are spending the money. thank you so much. and thanks to karen, susan, and jimmy for their time today. just ahead. a reason to smile. for all the horrors we discuss, new research actually suggests that the world is becoming a happier place these days. details straight ahead. ♪
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if you have more pep in your step, you're not alone. new polls show that the world is actually getting happier. here on the dylan ratigan show, we're getting happier. 77% of the folks in the 24 countries surveyed say they are generally happy and a quarter even claim to be very happy. who is smiling the most? walking down the aisle to say i do, one of the large influential short-term factors. married couples beyond the event itself do report that they are generally more happy than their single counterparts. two thumbs up for marriage. and if it's not love, others are finding happiness in money, which we know has a rather controversial framing as $75,000 is kind of a cutoff for that kind of thing. but 24% of those with a big household income are describing their lives as happy. as for the happiest place on earth, latin america.
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music, dancing, food. they know the government is corrupt. followed by north america, where we're learning that it's corrupted. the middle east comes in last. that doesn't surprise anybody, i suppose. even there, the happiness is rising thanks to things like the arab spring. you have to imagine that liberation can be a mood lifter. europe is the unhappiest as they have the most immediate economic crisis without any apparent resolution. currency is at risk. unemployment is high. most notably, spain and italy have the lowest levels of happiest there. on the flip side, more than half of indonesians are next. what would make us happy is good relationships with each other and the ability to realize our
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potential, which means if we were doing that, we would be solving our problems and creating 30 million jobs. next from getting jobs to retiring. why a tax break may be costing all of us later. [ male announcer ] yep that's your mouth. and it's surprising what it goes through in the course of a day. but what's even more surprising is that brushing alone isn't enough to keep it clean. fortunately, you've got listerine. unlike brushing which misses 75% of your mouth, listerine cleans virtually your entire mouth.
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so what are you waiting for? it's time to take your mouth to a whole new level of health. listerine... power to your mouth. i knew it'd be tough on our retirement savings, especially in this economy. but with three kids, being home more really helped. man: so we went to fidelity. we talked about where we were and what we could do. we changed our plan and did something about our economy. now we know where to go for help if things change again. call or come in today to take control of your personal economy. get free one-on-one help from america's retirement leader. ♪ home was an airport lounge and an ipad ♪ ♪ made sure his credit score did not go bad ♪ ♪ with a free-credit-score-dot-com ♪ ♪ app that he had ♪ downloaded it in the himalayas ♪ ♪ while meditating like a true playa ♪ ♪ now when he's surfing down in chile'a ♪ ♪ he can see when his score is in danger ♪
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wheeeeeeeeeeee! everything you love about geico, now mobile. download the new geico app today. so i used my citi thank you card to pick up some accessories. a new belt. some nylons. and what girl wouldn't need new shoes? we talked about getting a diamond. but with all the thank you points i've been earning... ♪ ...i flew us to the rock i really had in mind. ♪ [ male announcer ] the citi thank you card. earn points you can use for travel on any airline, with no blackout dates. rule number one of politics. never raise taxes on anything in an election year. that the reason behind the bipartisanship on the payroll tax. at least through the november
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election. as much as that tax break might seem nice now, it is a joke when it compares to the 30 million jobs we need to create. they call it a job creator. that's good for a little. the federal revenue we're giving up, however, in exchange for that impe tent response is taking away money from social security funds in the years to come. with millions of baby boomers set to be added to the roles and with washington willing and able to raid the system, the only way to deal with this jobs problem and the prosperity problem is with a massive culture of investment and job creation that creates a surge in economic flows. our next guest says we don't know whether that is going to happen and reform is needed now or future generations will be left with nothing when it comes to social security. sylvester sheber is author of "the predictable surprise."
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sylvester, why is it predictable? >> well, we have known since the 1920s that if employers don't fund their pension benefits as they are accumulating them, they are going to get into trouble. ultimately, they will go bankrupt because these obligations overwhelm them. we have relearned this time and again. in 1960s we had stooud baker. in the 1980s, we had a number of steel companies. most recently, we have been seeing auto companies and the airlines succumbing to unfunded liabilities. in the case of social security, franklin roosevelt knew in the 1930s if we didn't accumulate some of the contributions and actually lay them aside and invest them in interest that the system would get extremely
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expensive. probably too expensive. he said it would be unfair or immoral. but we went the other route, and now we're experiencing what he thought would be unfair. >> it's an interesting thing. you just gave us a wide variety of anecdotes all suggesting the same problem. if you commit retirement resources to a group of people, but do not fund the resources as they are incured, that inevitably, you end up with the very worst, misaligned interests and really a ponzi scheme of thought and manipulation of the entire experience. which makes me wonder, if we have learned this math mall call lesson so long ago, politically why we would indulge any variation in the rule that dates back to the 1920s. >> there are certain circumstances under which national governments can run pay
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as you go systems. but they need to moderate them or calibrate them so the burden does not become so heavy on the working-age population that it overwhelms their ability to realize some economic prosperity. the issue today, the reason we have been cutting the payroll tax is because we think it's cutting back on consumption and job creation. the tax today, the combined tax on employees and employers for social security is 12.4% of payroll. if we try to deliver on benefits that are in current law by the time the baby boomers get fully retired in 2030, that will have to go up to 17%. if 12.4% is too high today, what makes us believe that 17% won't be too high down the road for these individuals, the people in your prior segment who aren't being properly educated, are
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going to be about 40 years old and we're going to be expecting them to pay a lot more than we are. >> which means we have lost our minds, haven't we? >> it doesn't really add up if you look at basic arithmetic. but at some juncture, we're going to be faced with some rules. >> a presuming we're able to create a resolution for enhancing our systems and all the things beyond the scope of this particular conversation, what solutions should we be considering immediately around social security, the most rational one that's struck e me that if you're rich, you shouldn't collect your benefits. that's the easiest money to take away. i recognize it as it's unquality, but not of inequity. >> i think we certainly can flatten the benefit structure. the problem if you put in means
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tests is that you get people doing some crazy things. they spend down their money so they pass the means test. they get themselves unwealthy. >> so it's a bad incentive. >> we see that with medicaid. people spending down wealth to get on medicaid. then have that pay for their nursing home. so we have to be a little bit careful, but we can reduce benefits for high-income people. we could raise the cap a bit on what they pay in terms of their earnings, but one of these days we ought to think of people living longer and working longer. >> the outrage of the fact that we live longer than we used to has to be acknowledged into the way we make decisions? >> in 1935 when we started, life expectancy at 65 was when eligibility kicked in, it was 12
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or 13 years. today we're retiring on average, the largest number of people collecting social security benefits collect them at age 62. now at age 65, we're living another five or six years longer than we did in the 1930s. >> listen, i saw something the other day. somebody was trying to convince me they could live to be 150. who knows where we're headed. by i appreciate your efforts. i agree with the basis of your advocacy. i thank you for coming to talk about it and for making the effort to write a book about it. "the predictable surprise" is the title. you just heard from the author. thank you, sylvester. coming up here on msnbc, "hardball" still to come. the amendment defeated today in
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the political world. chris digging into whether both parties think it's a winner. first, are rich people unethical than anybody else? we'll ask our favorite cheater after this. ♪ spread a little love my way ♪ ♪ spread a little something to remember ♪ ♪ ♪ spread a little joy... [ female announcer ] fresh milk and real cream. that's what makes philadelphia. ♪ so spread a little... [ female announcer ] and that's what makes the moment we enjoy it, a little richer. ♪ real belgian chocolate whipped with philadelphia cream cheese. new indulgence. the moment just got a little sweeter. i'm a wife, i'm a mom... and chantix worked for me. it's a medication i could take and still smoke, while it built up in my system. [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix is proven to help people quit smoking. it reduces the urge to smoke. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions
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>> it makes you look smart smarter and less likely to punch me. but let me say this. i love what olympia snow said. she said she left because there was dysfunction in congress. this enhances her brand. isn't it about branding wp i'm one of the most powerful people, but i can't get anything done. let's form the pity party. she can go out and make her money like palin. >> this woman has served for years. comparing her to sarah palin is an outrage. >> she's branding herself. now she can go and be a moderate. she's from maine. olympia snow's modern camping supplies. we want our tents to keep you dry, but rain? >> a generation of young men were inspired to take on the money through the mythology of
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gord gekko seeking to repair soe cultural and social damage he had on the influence of the young men who took his words to heart. take a listen. >> that movie was fiction. the problem is real. our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of a financial market. if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. >> oh, no. this has got to be your hero. >> i feel that youtube clip, is this real life? integrity in the markets? what? if a deal is too good to be true, it's probably awesome? he deserves an academy award for that. it's amazing. what i love best about it is this is the best that the fbi and fed's can do. >> i was thinking the same thing. >> i understand what's happening in the market. they have no investigators. >> the sec is not doing
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anything. let me kag michael douglas. >> then we'll go back to the facts machines. back in the day when you were the other guy, would this have spoke to you? >> here's the thing. the sec was a character in the movie. it came from charlie sheen's character. that's the whole point. we don't fund those guys. the department of justice, which is another one absolutely nothing. but we have this gekko youtube. that's going to fix the problem. findly, could it be that rich people are unethical? i take issue with that question because it suggests that poor people might not be unethical. are you suggesting that rich
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people are anymore unethical? >> there was a study that said rich people are more unethical. >> it was commissioned. we talked about this before. you value money over everything. when you make money, it makes you feel like you're god. you get to buy whatever you want. you get to buy love and happiness and secret levels. >> where do they sell that? they sell that in the soul. rich people get to combine what it's all about. when you have money from washington to wall street, you can make the rules. you don't break the rules. >> is there a sole section? >> they come empty, but you can fill it with cake and chocolate and other bobbles. like $6,000 shower curtain. >> and cutting people off. it feels good to be a jerk. i think that's what we learn
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