Ben Shapiro (37:37)
Wow, okay. The President happens to be right about this when he says there isn't talent. Again, people are reading that. I think wrongly he's saying there's not enough talent in particular industries at this time. You need a transitional skill set force to come in and sometimes teach Americans to do something. I'm not sure what's totally unreasonable about that. I think frankly there's a lot of demagoguery of these issues going on because people don't want to acknowledge the realities of how economics actually works. It's more fun to rail against the idea that there are any shortcomings at all anywhere in the American labor force or that it's actually good to bring drain other countries or that we should have the best and brightest from other places come here and engage in our economy. And again, I love Laura Ingraham. I think she's wonderful. When Laura says if you go back to the 1950s and 60s, how did we do it then? The answer is there were a lot of foreign born people who actually were founding some of these companies and were involved in the production of some of our most sophisticated technologies. I mean she's talking about missile technologies for example. I mean it was an ex Nazi, Werner von Braun was heading up a rocket program in the United States. And that's not a defense of Werner von Braun's Nazi associations. That is a recognition that importation of talent actually matters when you are crafting a dynamic economy. Of course, of course. But it seems that when it comes to affordability, people are more interested again in demagoguing the issues than actually talking about solutions to the issues. And if you do that, what you'll end up with is a lot of people who are angry about affordability but get no actual answers that provide affordability. When Laura says she's interested in raising American wages, everyone's interested in raising American wages. But the problem is this. If you raise the American wages and you raise the American prices faster than the wages, then the wages get eaten up by the price increases. This is what happened during the Biden administration. You need two things, increased wages and lowering prices. And the way that you do that is with innovation and with increased supply. That is how that works. You need both of those things. I can artificially raise the wages in the city of Detroit. In 1950 by unionizing the entire workforce and negotiating extraordinarily lucrative contracts. And by 1965, the American auto industry will be getting its lunch eaten by the Japanese. You can do this again. There are ways to artificially increase the price of labor. What you end up doing is increasing the price of the product that the labor produces and that ends up making that product non competitive. And then eventually the industry dies. Short term thinking here is the enemy of actual economic health. Robust economic health in the long term, which requires innovation and malleability of labor. Supply and movability of labor is a big thing here. And again, none of this is to argue that we should have free unfettered immigration or the United States is just an immigration economic forum. I started this conversation by acknowledging full scale. The H1B visa program may be letting in too many people. It may be letting in the wrong people. But the argument that is being made against the H1B visa is an argument that proves too much. As we used to say in law school, it is too broad an argument and it basically says we should simply shut our borders. And again, if what we are worried about is quote unquote, the price of labor in the United States and we are saying that we need higher wages, then we probably should go all the way and just ban tech. I mean, these arguments, these are not good arguments. The argument that economic health comes, for example, from artificially increasing the price of labor by restricting supply, that applies just as much to tech developments themselves, to robotics, for example, as it does to importation of labor. If you want to maintain manufacturing jobs in Ohio, and that's like the only thing you care about is increasing the actual wage paid for a manufacturing job in Ohio, you probably should ban all robotics. Because if you take a look at where all those manufacturing jobs went in the United States, manufacturing productivity did not go down in the United States. It has increased since nafta. In the United States, the number of jobs went down not because they were shipped to Mexico, but because robots are doing a lot of those jobs. Now. You can ban the robots, you can, it'll just make you globally and domestically non competitive and make everybody broad spectrum poor. Because again, it's not just about the amount of money in your pocket. It's about about what you can buy with that money. If the price of all the goods goes up and your wage goes up, but the price is going up faster and you have worse products, you don't have a better life. And that's the thing that everybody is seeking when it comes to affordability. Well, speaking of affordability, I did an interview last week that aired early this week with Trigonometry. That's Constantine Kissen and Francis Foster talking about the affordability debate in New York. And one of the things that apparently went viral is somebody taking, like, clearly taking something I said out of context and then pretending that what I'm saying is that the solution, economically speaking, to affordability is people just leaving their houses, which is not what I'm saying. So I want to play the full clip so people can understand what I said, and then I'm happy to explain what I meant about general affordability and about the decisions that we make in our individual lives. And so the fact that everyone's flattering Mamzani by saying, well, you know, he. He did talk a lot about affordability. And what I keep saying to people is, well, affordability is not like Beetlejuice, where if you just say it over and over, it suddenly arrives. You actually have to pursue policies that are likely to alleviate an affordability problem. But if your solution is always give me more power, and it does seem like that is the solution of the day from both sides, actually, then you're likely to just continue penduluming one side to the other because people don't want to learn the actual lesson, which is if you. If you actually want affordability, then either you have to change policies or change locations. Those are really the only two things. And also, I think more broadly, it's not about affordability. We have trained an entire generation of people to believe that if their lives are not what they want them to be, it's the fault of systems, as opposed to decisions that are in their own control. And politicians absolutely have a stake in selling that a lot of people in our industry have a stake in selling that makes people feel good about themselves and bad about the world. And the reality is, if you want a better life, you should feel better about the world and worse about yourself until you actually go do the right things. I, broadly, generally speaking, as a matter of principle, agree with you. But I mean, I was looking around at property prices, real estate prices in New York. I'm doing pretty well for myself. I feel kind of poor looking at those things. Oh, no, it's unfortunate. And I'm not saying it's not affordable. It absolutely is unaffordable. And if you wanted to make a political difference, what you would do is you would relieve the building regulations. You would make it easier for people to build, not harder. You wouldn't rent control, because if you Stop rent controlling, then that creates incentive for people to build. You would allow people to build up further. You would get rid of many of the code regulations that are kind of antiquated. Like there are things you actually could do. And then if you're a young person and you can't afford to live here, then maybe you should not live here. I mean, that is a real thing. I know that we've now grown up in a society that says that you deserve to live where you grew up. But the reality is that the history of America is almost literally the opposite of that. The history of America is you go a place where there is opportunity. And if the opportunities are limited here and they're not changing, then you really should try to think about other places where you have better opportunities. Again, that's not saying that public policy can't change. I think it can. But I think that the solutions being offered are, are untenable. Okay, so I agree with me, as a famous man once said. So as you will note there, I'm offering two specific things for people to do. One is change the public policy where you're at, if you're in New York, change the public policies that the public policy is better alleviate some of the problems that you have with affordability by doing all the things that I'm talking about right there. And then I say that as an individual, as an individual human being, if you are upset with the public policy and you feel like it's not going to change anytime in the near future and that your life is being ruined by that public policy, you are left with two choices. One is to sit there and be miserable and fulminate against a system that is not changing again. If you can change the system, great. Do it. Vote out mom, Donnie. Vote out the bad city council. Vote in somebody who understands basic economics and isn't a third world socialist. Do all those things. Great. Stay and fight. I did this in California for years. And then there came a point where I realized California was never going to provide me the public policy backdrop for a successful life, the kind of life that I wanted to live. And so I moved. And again, that comes with costs. I'm not pretending that moving doesn't have costs. And when I moved, I made sure that, you know, I'm lucky. I was able to. My parents were able to move with me, our in laws were able to move, A couple sisters were able to move. We were able to take our entire family, which at that point was actually geographically disparate, and move into the same area. No One has talked more publicly about the importance of having a supportive family structure near you than I have. It is also true that if you're a young person, a 20, 21 year old, 22 year old, and you're not finding successful conditions in the city, and those conditions are not likely to change, if you want to seek happiness, you can either get angry at the system that's not going to change, which will not make your life better, or you can do the things that are in your control, like maybe looking outside of New York City. This seems fairly inarguable to me. That is not an argument for, quote, unquote, abandoning the city or abandoning your principles or anything like that. Every individual has to make their own decision about what level of bad policy they're willing to undergo in order to maintain their status in the city. But simply shouting at the moon doesn't solve problems. It doesn't. David Harsanyi has an excellent piece over at the Washington examiner talking about this, and he quotes one of the very online people saying, quote, if you want Democrats to have a supermajority, this is the message for the GOP to adopt. Tell people they need to move. Don't form family bonds. Worship the banks and big corporations. My goodness. Okay, first of all, that's absurd. There is no one in America who's talked more about forming family bonds than I have. And let me explain something about forming family bonds. The reason that people in New York City are not forming family bonds is not because the price of rent is too high. That is not the reason. If you get married, there are two of you in New York City, likely both of you have jobs now sharing one one space. So it is cheaper for you to get married and live with your working spouse in that same apartment complex than it would have been for you to do it by yourself. Okay, the reason we have a marriage crisis in America is not because of economics. This is a lie. There are places all over the world that are poorer than the United States that have much higher marriage rates. In fact, one of the bizarre things about the way that the developed countries work is the more developed the country, the fewer people tend to get married and the fewer children they have. So this notion that, broad speaking Americans are not having kids because they're too poor is silly. You know what? Americans were having tons of kids the 1930s, like, lots and lots and lots of kids. And then they had lots of kids again in the 40s and lots of kids again in the 50s. And then they stopped having kids when birth control became available because we're a rich country. And this is true for every developed country. This attempt to link a sort of Marxist redistributionist economics, heavy regulation and government subsidization, that's what's going to make the kids happen. I have zero, zero evidence supports this. Zero. Literally none. But as Harsanyi says, if there's a better way to worship a bank than borrowing 800 grand on a 30 year mortgage at 6.5% for a 900 square foot home in Park Slope, I've yet to hear of it. Though no one, as far as I can tell, is arguing that the GOP should adopt Moving is a central message. That's correct. I'm not saying that that's the central message. I'm saying that you, in your personal life, when you're talking about what makes your life better, be accurate about what are the things that you can do to make your life better. As Harsanyi points out, it should be noted, it's a myth that all, or perhaps even most people grousing about housing costs and expensive metros are native to those cities. Most of these people would not surrender familial and communal bonds if they relocated to less expensive cities. So again, the idea that like living in New York because that's where your family is for the most part, that's not true of a lot of these people. 70% of the population in Washington is not native to DC. A huge percentage of New York is not native to DC. The average home price in New York is $735,000. It's not much better in the outlying suburbs or even exurbs. None of that is considering the sky high cost of living in the area, says Harsanyi. Years ago, a couple starting out could comfortably live in many towns on Long Island. Not today. You're paying three quarters of a million dollars for a new house, not to mention outlandish property taxes in any neighborhood with a decent school district. For that kind of money, a young couple could get a veritable mansion with a pool, parks, low taxes, more opportunity, and a thriving school district in a Dallas or Indianapolis suburb. There is nothing wrong with pointing that out. That is correct, obviously. And it is also true, as I said in that tape, that the history of America is a history of people moving. As Harsanyi points out, in 1950 Detroit was a booming industrial city with 1.8 million residents and Phoenix had 106,000 residents. Today, 640, 000 people live in Detroit and 1.6 million people live In Phoenix, moving is not a new thing. We are moving significantly less than our parents. We are less mobile. And that is because politicians are lying to people. They are lying to you when they say the politicians stay in place, we will solve the affordability crisis. And then they provide for policies that do nothing of the sort of it just makes you frustrated and then you go to the other party who says the same thing and then they don't do it and it makes you frustrated. And this is why you get more and more radical politics in these unaffordable cities. But none of these politicians are going to solve that problem. Number one, the solutions they are applying are not actual solutions. And number two, they are lying to you because they don't even have solutions to these things. There's an article in the Washington Post today talking about affordable cities. And there's one in particular they point out. Pittsburgh. As real estate prices and interest rates shot up in recent years, the prospect of homeownership moved further for many Americans, especially young adults in large metro areas where the median home price can run well over half a million dollars. But not in Pittsburgh. After dropping $10,000 to rehab a bathroom and decrepit kitchen cabinets, Isaac Ray and Liam Weaver bought their first home for $163,000. Though the housing market has tempered since the frenetic days of 2020, prices remain relentlessly high. The US median topped $410,000 in the second quarter. That's more than 50% climb in in five years, which of course is due to government inflationary policy. For people on the coast, it's even higher. In LA, it's $995,000. How about Greater Pittsburgh? $229,000. With a low unemployment rate with new industries, private redevelopment is happening at rapid rates. Deregulation, ability to build fixer uppers. And when, when I made the case that personal mobility is something that people should consider again, that's not for everybody. But this, this kind of bizarre notion that has set in on the right, that personal mobility is not part of the American story. That is not true. And I'm not talking about abandoning families. I'm not talking again. We are already in atomized society. You think New York is a place that's filled with families who just don't want to move. New York, truly, that's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about singles who are living in rent controlled apartments with a couple of roommates. New York is like the center of American familial life. The reason I'M pointing this out is because if you want to have realistic expectations of how politics works and what it can achieve, your life will be better. And if you want to have realistic expectations about how you can make your own life better, which is what we all want our own lives to be better, we want the lives of our families to be better, then recognizing baseline realities is the key component to happiness. Ignoring reality in favor of political utopianism is a recipe for personal unhappiness, and it's not something that, honestly, people on the right should be promoting. Alrighty. Meanwhile, speaking of idiocy, Vogue has now decided in a piece by Shantae Joseph that having a boyfriend is embarrassing. Again, these are these are the people complaining about affordability in New York, and the people complaining about affordability are the people who write pieces for Vogue about having a boyfriend is embarrassing. I'm amazed by conservatives telling me that ultra liberal New York and saying, hey, maybe you might want to consider moving to Nashville or Florida if you can, that somehow this is an anti conservative point. Okay, According to this columnist, there's been a pronounced shift in the way people showcase their relationships online. Far from fully hard launching romantic partners, straight women are opting for subtler signs, a hand on a steering wheel, clinking glasses at dinner, or the back of someone's head. On the more confusing end, you have faces blurred out of wedding pictures or entirely professional edited photos with the fiance conveniently cropped out of all the shots. So what gives? Are people embarrassed by their boyfriends now, or is something more complicated going on? To me, it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds, one where they can receive the social benefit of having a partner, but also appear not so boyfriend obsessed. They come across as culturally loserish. They want the prize in celebration of partnership, but understand the Normaness of it, says Zoe Samudzi, the writer and activist. Women don't want to be seen as being all about their man, but they also want the clout that comes with being partnered with. But it's not all about image. Apparently some people believe in the evil eye, which is that your happy relationship will make your your near friends upset or something. Or people being icked out. Okay, a society that doesn't champion partnerships, that doesn't champion having a wife or a husband, is a society doomed to failure. Turns out the post religious society is pretty bad. I also say that the post traditional religious society is pretty bad. There is a a movement that is, shall we say, post traditional biblical that that is growing in size. People who are Sort of reinterpreting their religious tradition in order to, I would say, tickle their fancies. There is a pastor of a. A small non denominational church in Canton, Missouri, who's now making a big deal out of the fact that according to his website, he is. He has now taken a second wife. I don't mean he got divorced and then got married again. I mean he has two wives. And so he looks at the biblical text and he says he has two beautiful wives. My second wife is expecting my eighth child. We're thrilled for what the Lord has done for our family. And then he says, In 2019, I discovered the surprising fact that God not only never prohibited polygamy, but throughout the entire biblical narrative, he divinely ordained it in several cases, including David, Jacob, and Yash. In. In the book of Chronicles, God lawfully regulated the practice of plural marriage. And I just. So first of all, if you just got familiar with the Bible like six years ago and, and you read it for the first time, you're like, hey, look, there's polygamy in, you know, 3,000 years ago, 3,500 years ago. Congratulations on being able to read. And also congratulations on knowing nothing literally about the subsequent biblical tradition in Catholicism, Judaism and Protestantism, like, really well done here. But here he is explaining polygon. Again, this is, this is not a good thing. Now I want to share something with you. I believe first and foremost that all lawful marriage is divinely ordained. In other words, if the woman is lawfully available, the union is brought about by God, starting with Adam and Eve, when God brought her to the man. Go to Genesis 2:22. This is very important so that we don't accuse David or anyone of some kind of sin that they didn't commit. You need to understand how marriage actually works. It's not through dating websites. That's number one. Now, can God bring people together through a dating website? Sure. But here's how this works. Genesis 2:22. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. Everybody say brought her to the man. I'm submitting to you with lots of scriptural evidence that as long as the union is lawful, God brought her to the man. And I can prove this over and over again. It wasn't just Eve. All lawful marriages, God brings the woman to the man. This goes for a first wife. This goes for a second wife, third wife, however many David ended up. Okay, so it's true for, for all the wives. Okay, so first of all, we should point out the multiple marriages in the Bible tend not to work out particularly well. Sarah and Hagar, it doesn't work out particularly well. Rachel and Leia, it doesn't work out particularly well. Isaac only had one wife, Rebecca. It turns out that actually plural marriage turns out historically pretty poorly. Okay, so number one, there's that number two basic rule of sort of interpretation of Scripture, at least in the Old Testament context, which is the one that I'm more familiar with. Obviously, just because the Bible talks about people doing a thing does not mean that the Bible is happy with people doing the thing. God orders you in the Bible to do particular things or bans you from doing particular things. But if the Bible just gives quote, unquote permission to do a thing, that doesn't mean that the Bible is celebrating the thing. It's usually a transitional rule, which is why in the year 1000 in Judaism, famously, there was a rabbi named Rabbeinutam who banned plural marriage. Like man married to more than one woman. In Christianity as early as the 6th century, there are people who are. Who are already moving to ban plural marriage. Took another thousand years for that to be made official. But the reality is it fell out of common practice long before that. Why? Because. What is the ideal marriage? The ideal marriage is described at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis. A man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife. His wife, not his wives. But why is this happening? Because the guy wants attention and because he has a desire, presumably to legitimize his own behavior. This is why tradition is good. It's why tradition is necessary. And when you just free yourself of all tradition and start freewheeling it, you end up in some pretty bad areas. Whether that's secular or whether it is pseudo religious in this way. Well, join me online to discuss all of this. Is an actual expert on the other half of the Bible, the New Testament. I'm an Old Testament guy. He is the master of the New Testament. That would be Matt Frady. He's the host of Pines with Aquinas, one of our new Daily Wire shows. Matt, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
