ross talking millennial socialism i'm joined by my guest mexico in new york he's an economist and writer as well as a senior research fellow at the american institute for economic research his research focuses on policy and technology in baltimore we have thomas de lorenzo he's a professor of economics at loyola university maryland in baltimore as well as a senior fellow at the mieses institute his latest book is the problem with socialism and in monterey we cross to david henderson he is an emeritus professor of economics with the naval postgraduate school in monterey as well as a research fellow with the hoover institution at stanford university he is author of the joy of freedom in economists honestly are gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate thomas let me go to you 1st in baltimore i don't i don't really think on this program we need to speak about the failings of socialism i think we're all on the same page on that here my point in this program is here no i don't want to waste time on that because it's obvious ok historically it's obvious on its face here but thomas what

is the attraction then why do we have so many millennial zz and so many people attracted to this idea that so many of them have no historical knowledge of whatsoever go ahead thomas in baltimore was mostly because people like david henderson and myself have been snuffed out of the academic world there are still hundreds of classical liberals in american academe but were outnumbered by hundreds of thousands of others and the young people are taught what economists call the nirvana fallacy they pose socialism as some sort of utopian ideal and compare that to the real world and of course the real world always comes up short when you compare it to utopia and that's basically the methodology that's used and it's even used widely in the economics profession with all the theories of so-called market failure and so even if you take economics you don't really get well grounded in how markets work and the importance of private property and private enterprise. was in

most economics departments in my opinion i think that then i have a problem and i would like and so there are fewer and fewer of us ok david in monterey you want to jump in go ahead david yeah i would like to add that i agree with what i'm just. i think it's more tens of thousands to a few 100. also also it's even worse than the innocence is a lot of the things that the government intervention causes a lot of the problems are attributed to careful or attributed to free markets and that's a real problem so for example we've got high housing costs in california that's totally due to government preventing people from building more housing and yet somehow that's a knock on capitals not some dark and free market and a lot of young people remember stand were with the understanding ok to understand more economics from people understood it's about you know maxie but you get this message not only is there a growing popularity of socialism as people understand it which i will still

continue to say they don't really understand here but why is do we get this mantra that capitalism is failed people it seems very real to them and i would attribute to it at least one reason is this whole culture of entitlement everyone's and titled to something now and they look to the state and that's what they want the state more to do for them and entitlement is is the path to a to serfdom i think that that is a historical record as well what is this critique of capitalism where does it come from go ahead max yeah i think there's 2 fallacies here and the 1st one is that capitalism is the status quo is exactly what we have right now and you know the occupy wall street protesters back in during the financial crisis they weren't protesting capitalism they thought they were they were actually protesting the nexus of sort of big business and big government together and the sort of power that that yields the 2nd fallacy is that if we were. want to do something as

a society to help someone or to organize ourselves in some way that that is either you know this nation state this government that's going to do it or it's not going to be done at all and you know it my colleague ed string is the president ai you are literally wrote the book on private governance and there are so many other options and that's one thing we have to definitely let people know about ok but you know thomas it is what we hear a lot in the meter go ahead jump in that's the whole point of the program thomas in baltimore go ahead was going so it's been a lot of the young people who are ron paul followers they were his followers because they did this like crony capitalism especially the antics of the federal reserve board and then when ron left the political scene so many of the same young people became bernie sanders supporters because bernie sanders was ranting and raving against crony capitalism the big difference of course that bernie thinks. the of response should be even more crony capitalism with bigger government and

wrong of course as a libertarian and so so that's evidence that these young people are just an educated they don't they confuse crony capitalism with real capitalism and that's part of a big part of what i've done in my academic career is over in several books trying to explain this yet in a lot of different ways you know david and i i agree with that i'm going to go to david in monterey i mean i'm very concerned about the monopolization of the economy i think that has to be addressed this crony capitalism has to be addressed the financial ization of the economy has to be addressed but socialism isn't the answer to any of those things go ahead david in in monterrey right and part of it is it's a misunderstanding of socialism so one birdie was question what do you want he said he wanted what happened scandinavia scandinavia has a corporate tax rate. that's roughly comparable where it's 22 percent is yet 20 percent you know so so that means they have a more they have a bigger welfare state. we actually have less regulation the council of economic

advisors under trump put out a report last year earlier this year pointing out that we're kind of in the middle as far as regulation goes in industrialized countries and some scandinavian countries have actually less regulation we do so again it does come down to this misunderstanding and once one thing we can do about that and say in iraq all the other thing is i'm a glass house book on a person or maybe here it's a glass of thirds full but i want to then say ok let's tell them that let's educate them let's write about that let's do all's well yeah but you know max again this that would be against the this anti-elite mantra which you know i can understand it here but i mean it again is going back to this kind of in sense of entitlement i mean everybody is given something to to further their life and people are so used to it right now you get a useless education studying something that has studies at the end of it that's a dead end almost by definition and it's actually a scam ok it's

a scam if that's what it is ok to get it all these college educators and counselors they're all going to the bank while the middle class is going is going broke ok now that has actually that's a system that has to be broken i don't know how they don't go to max when you've got a maximum going back to david when it got a little bit of max interest and we got him you may say and then i'll go to you ok go ahead max go ahead max. whoa whoa i'm going to thank you for that peter by pushing back on you a little bit and saying you're probably right about the entitlements the sense of entitlement but if we're going to make the case to some of these people that they're wrong about socialism we're not going to really do it by saying you're entitled i think the case that you make is that capitalism isn't necessarily about these big businesses and big business i bring that happens but it's really a bottom up force for change right that ultimately what capitalism is and and it's that and it's evolving in innovative and all that yet ok david

a month ago you wanted judd and i had some facts about the u.s. economy the middle class is disappearing it's yes a period where it's disappearing upward we have 3 times as many households with $100000.00 or more in family income and this is adjusted for inflation than we had 50 years ago that's you credible improvement so let's not forget that things are getting better ok well i think will be there isn't the income distribution issue thomas let me go to you there i think this also is giving people cause to quote unquote support socialism because while there are people moving up there are a lot of people moving down as well that's the heartland that's who voted for trump go ahead thomas in baltimore. well that's true but have there's a lot of game playing with these income distribution statistics because there's an economist named jim cox who wrote

a great book called mr rich and poor that tracked individual families over several decades and so and saw that there's a great deal mobility in the american economy so the people at the bottom are not the same people if we have 10000000 more immigrants from the 3rd world well they'll start at the bottom and so if you look at the statistics in a look like income inequality is worse but what happens to those people in the future is that is the question and they come here for orson primarily in the 1st place because they want to take advantage of american capitalism and the opportunities that it offers that's right if you had on the issue in scandinavia by the way but if you look at the editors of economic freedom finish up thomas go ahead. i thought we were supposed to jump in if you look at the economically and published by the president of limitation united to 670 via is about the same as the united states very similar ok so if you want to get you guys can't talk over each other because the no one can hear here ok who said hey can i get my do but to say

peter can i jump in that would make it easier to make that you didn't say i got so you can go ahead david. if you have a whole bunch of n.b.a. players in a room and the average height is $6.00 and a whole bunch of school kids enter the room the average for schools that does say anything about the height of those players it's still the same that that gets that's to make the point that tom diemer in so just made that these people come in they're poor or they're low income they get better off our average income might fall but in fact we're doing better we have gardening services that are cheaper we have restaurants that are cheaper oh and by the way the author of the book that tom mentioned is not jim cox as michael carts and richard all ok thomas last 40 seconds in this part of the program director go ahead go ahead max jump in that's the point of the program i had maxed. yeah i i wanted to just build on that point and say that you know i care about poverty i care about helping people who are at the bottom i don't necessarily care that there is somebody who has

a lot more money than i grew is that they've probably done innovative things in the economy i agree all right gentlemen we're going to continue our discussion on capitalism and socialism in which one will win now we're going to go to a short break here after that short break we'll continue our discussion on millennial socialism stay with our. with the president constant drip. of the free money. we would have a day of reckoning and prices would revert back to reflect supply and demand. and there would be a catastrophic trap door opening underneath the u.s. economy because the u.s. won't do it for itself china will do it for the in the form of announcing as

a surprise $20000.00 tons of gold and the introduction of a gold backed crypto currency just will kill the u.s. dollar better than a doornail. your government and our government and all the other major governments of the world know what's going to and when it's going to. but they haven't told you and they haven't told me they haven't announced. imagine something as big as the earth. is going to cause tidal waves earthquakes volcanoes erupt and it's going to chill. so very for a while right. my great grandfather's quote. nobody would care

about the law or prison so you'd have wallace those should have. a turtle life between now and the. i'm saying. don't become my. point it's not going to be good as you'll see. this in the west. the so-called individual i suppose in this really strong belief that. society and the freedom of the individual. welcome back to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle for a month we're discussing millennial socialism.

ok let's go back to max in new york max explain to me i don't live in the united his what if see the appeal of a o c because i saw a clip of her yesterday i mean this is just gobble league nonsense i mean it would it would work out in a coffee house in a university somewhere on the east or west coast but it's so detached from reality but take a leave on the issue like of immigration you want you want to health care for everyone and you want to have open borders how is that pos how can anyone you know have the ability to get a leg to the congress and start of a spouse in that kind of nonsense and the liberal media there's no pushback virtually no pushback against this nonsense that's being spouted go ahead benz. you're exactly right peter and but you know we can clean our side of the street here and you know we talk about where people here about capitalism and if you're a 25 year old and you have done you're not you know if you don't know much about

economics you stay a little bit in form but you know you do something else you've only heard that capitalism is great from a republican party that for most of your life is put out other views that a lot of young people don't find acceptable and find kind of antiquated on social issues and things and so i think there's some confusion that capitalism is part of some old order that needs to be overturned rather than actually to force for change in our society and so i think that you can kind of cast blame all over the place but then you do have politicians on the left who are taking advantage of that i mean it's an interesting thomas and i i i think it's really well said already on this program is that there's very little knowledge of what actually economics how it really works and an ideology called socialism that has a track record of utter failure here but it's fused into political correctness isn't it i mean i actually came across a lecture about if you take down capitalism you take down the patriarchy as well i mean this to all this stuff is getting really fused together and it and i have no

he quit they're talking about but they certainly feel good about it thomas. yeah well you know i think it is a puppet and she has a puppet master which is her former chief of staff yeah who's some wealthy silicon valley guy and i think they know what they're doing you know these wrote this famous book in the 1920 s. called socialism and at the end of it he talks about what he calls destruction is and he said all socialists have always been 1st and foremost about destruction as in that is destroying the institutions of existing society and then they could start over again and create their utopia and i think that's what they're about that's what the frank we're at school has always been about is destroying the institutions and. western civilization and capitalism and private property the foremost among them and so i think that's what people like the or about i don't think she's ignorant i think she's who knows what she's doing and her puppet

masters all certainly know what they're doing and i think that's exactly what they're up to yeah ok but you know i know i know about this character unfortunately has an unpronounceable name for me i think it's like bangladesh or something like that but. david but david i mean but you know if you have how do you have explain the impetus of the if some guy some mogul in silicon valley millionaire or whatever he is and they want to burn it all down i don't understand that that's against your own self interest ok as i said in my introduction there's a lot of people of privilege of amazing privilege and of accomplishment and they they want to all throw it away with that the throw the dice on something that it's a big if i mean and i mean that and those chances are really dodgy to burn it all down i have my criticisms of the system of already mentioned it here but this kind of approach is completely self destructive go ahead david. well i think it is a self destructive and honestly i don't know the answer i would like to talk to the

guy i'd like to be in a room with him for an hour and just ask questions not argue just ask questions to try understand because like you i don't understand he's incredibly wealthy some of his wealth at least would be at risk but not just that probably a lot of the things he like single life would be or wrists the more government power we haven't figured out about this robs a certain the more the only kind of power worth having is political power and then everything becomes a conflict even maybe whether we get to practice the religion we war and so it's it is horrible i don't understand it but i at least i think i can say you understated the case peter because it's not to be you know it's a big certainty that if this happens we're going to be worse off and he's going to be you know it a sequel so when i when i was teaching undergraduates at the university of california i had a course in modern european history and i used to always trying to point out to

them and they didn't absorb it and this was a long time ago guys but i used to say you know you always hear that you know socialism is a good idea which is implemented badly and i would say no it's the reverse it's a very very bad idea and it was implemented very very well and we see the results of it here or as i said before the program here you know capitalism does make social mistakes but socialism makes capital mistakes i mean and on a human scale ok we're not just talking about you know destroying the stock market or something like that. again you know where does this kind of utopian feeling come from because it i can explain it rationally go ahead max. so so let's put the politicians and their puppet masters aside for a 2nd i think we have no choice but to approach the rank and file millennia old who are saying they support socialism with assuming slightly better intentions and maybe less understanding that maybe they see poverty around them and they want to

help people and that some you know that somewhat becomes an identity thing also and it gets them broiled in that but we have to then make the case to them that our society can help people better if we don't have this big centralized source of power in the middle that everybody assumes has to do everything and so you know that opens up the innovation the kind of decentralized bottom up ideas that people have and so you know i think that you know you're we can help people more if we have a more market oriented for you well i think you should allow people to help themselves stop putting impediments in front of people or thomas you know when i argue when i argue with these these left wing liberals and socialists here i always bring up the issue of dependency do you want to be dependent on the government and institutions and remarkably so a lot of them say that wouldn't be a bad idea and i gassed by that i'm aghast by that when you are dependency the

less freedom you have i believe in choices dependency there are very few if any choices go ahead thomas. you know my friend walter williams wrote a whole book explaining why most americans hate freedom. they want to be taken care of by moma and moma is government and that's why people like bernie sanders i tell my students he seem to think government has an applause you know free this free that free education free car free house and so that's so we were the remnant people like myself and the other the other 2 on the panel and you peter were the run the. keypad. where we're going to save save the concept of freedom that's why friedrich hayek wrote the road to serfdom yep yep in fact just this morning i was thinking that of my next writing project would be to write sort of a road to serfdom for high schoolers explaining some of the basic fundamental ideas

. please do that because i need to explain these issues in a way more to you and i go hey just go ahead david. did that i mean one of the things that made roche a certain such a bestseller was that the reader's digest had him do a version or maybe they did it after got which but he. did it back in the forty's and fifty's condensed it down and made it better i mean made it more in the stand at least to a lot of people i think it's all i think certainly hundreds of thousands and might it might have been more than a 1000000 you know yeah more of that kind of. you know and you know max at the thing another thing is it was it immediately high exciting also you know it might mean you know i'm going back to you know max i think i think that i again when i argue with these people i always tell them why should you allow the government to make choices for you you know you like to sit in your starbucks and you like to you know where you are you know your sandals and you know walk around you know you know

you make all your choices but i said government gives you limited choices and that's a form of coercion you're giving your freedom away when you allow yourself to be cool worse they don't seem to get that go ahead max. so i think a really important point and maybe something that can help at least a few people get that does come from high end it's the it's the point about localized knowledge that we all know so much more about our immediate surroundings that are not ones that are wants or needs and there's no way that any kind of centralized authority can ever incorporate that i think that's a really convincing point that speaks to people and says you can't do this stuff from the top down that's that's just a fact and then after. that i think that we have to you know as frustrating as frustrated as we all 'd are we have to try not to just you know shake our heads and say these kids today because again that's not going to that's not going to change any minds and that's not going to you know we have to make our

case and make it steadfastly but we have to also do it in a way that tries to reach out to somebody yeah you know. atomosphere i one thing i did that was a couple of years ago in a pretty heated debate that was more heat coming from the other side than me i just said ok this is what socialism i think this is i got a question so this is what socially you get free food free clothes free entertainment. free time. that's what your socialism is and i said yes and i said that's good mo that's great no all of those decisions are made by the people that run get you know ok that's because that's what your socialist utopia is going to be it's going to be like a prison camp i'm going to give thomas the last minute on the program go ahead thomas. you know i'm old enough to remember of the 3 stooges on television i know i did i do grow up in europe remember this but there was one episode there's one

episode where the stooges kept committing crimes quickly wanted to go to jail because there was good food there a warm bed and everything and that's what they wanted and so it's a little more pleasant than getting low and so that's that's basically what we're looking at here the people who seek safety and security at the hands of the state yeah yeah but if you do that you give up your freedom is not a fair exchange in your mind i don't think it's a fair exchange you know no no no no no no the point of like to make as a lot of my students you know the young people are very concerned about the environment and but when i teach when my classes and i show them all the failures of government in protecting the environment and also all the private solutions of voluntary solutions free market environmentalism as a whole subdiscipline now in economics they really like that they really do they understand that if we can rely on market incentives and private property we can solve a lot of these problems that are local i was that they didn't exactly you know if

you care if you care about the environment good area to midway if you care about the environment plant trees that's a good start that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests in new york baltimore and in monterey and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. you next time remember. to my hardest to a dash for us to continue. to watch and just get. out of. since.

then sank on. tele. has suddenly been my mother. and her neighbors who. seem. to be. the one who can move the whole thing. come. to see it all play out so we don't. die so much smoke the soup seals still so not to sin and believe to such.

a tense situation in venezuela is still all over the news the problem in venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented but that socialism has been great only implement inside venezuela things look different we're going to announce sanctions against petroleum to venezuela socio. famously have a son of the moment belief that absent political data to see on the people of the moment that the who story isn't new makes him cold in henry kissinger to tell him that it would not be tolerated in latin america. and old terms of economic and social system could take hold and therefore the policy would be to make. it call me scream so once you know making the economy of venezuela screed. you know world big

partisan. and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks 2.

bolivia's opposition leader in the senate declares herself the country's interim president after ever morale us have fled the country and claimed asylum in mexico. russian foreign minister answers questions at an international peace forum and he gives his views on the blame game between world powers. the west is pretty much playing to be played for everything. no real look for ever sitting to just sort of sold mistakes. and even countries have refused to accept a former islamic state fighters being sent home by turkey our guests to debate the story.