In the first part of the show, Jason Hartman answers a listener’s question about investing in real estate amid Covid-19. He also elaborates on pension plans versus real estate investing and the greater fool theory. Afterward, he talks to Phil Harvey about welfare. They discuss how taxpayers are getting burned by welfare going to many wrong places, how the well-to-do individuals are getting welfare, and the bonuses received by farmland owners for no apparent reason.
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This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
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Welcome to the American monetary associations Podcast, where we explore how monetary policy impacts the real lives of real people. And the action steps necessary to preserve wealth and enhance one’s lifestyle.
Jason Hartman 0:29
Our guest today will be Phil Harvey, who is going to talk about the human cost of welfare, yes, the human costs of welfare, and welfare for the rich. If you are not upset about this, you should be because it’s absolutely ridiculous. So we’ll dive into that today with our guests. And I would highly recommend that I recommended this a long time ago, shortly after I had watched this documentary. But check out a documentary called poverty Inc. Poverty Inc. I believe as the name I think I’m remembering that correctly. Very, very interesting, just really makes you think about charity in new ways. Because our guest today is the founder and former president of one of the largest charities in the world, that implements all sorts of family planning help in developing countries where it is sorely needed, not needed in the US a whole different issue. It’s amazing how imbalanced this stuff is and in different places around the world. So we’ll get into that in a few minutes. But tonight, and by the time you hear this, it may have already happened. But for those of you who purchased VIP tickets, for our meet the Masters virtual conference, tonight is our first of the two VIP follow up implementation sessions. So I’m very excited about that prepping for it right after this. Little bit more preparation. And that’ll just be in a few hours this evening. So that should be a lot of fun. Look forward to seeing you all there on zoom. We sent you emails with the login link, and we sent you text messages as well. So we look forward to seeing you tonight. Also, our live stream is on Sunday, coffee talk with Jason, and guests. That will be this Sunday 8am. Pacific, bring your coffee and 11am. Eastern on Sunday. Look forward to seeing all of you there. get your questions answered. You know, what was some great content for you as well. And speaking of questions, we have a listener question from Scott, Scott says is now a good time to start investing me in real estate. He says, I heard Jason in a podcast, when he said that waiting might be better. We have done this with our decision to buy a personal residence as well. So I guess what you’re saying, Scott is you’re you’ve waited to buy a personal residence? If waiting is the answer. Can you point me to some resources to prep and I guess learn more about investing? You say you are a public school teacher in New Jersey with a pension that you’re vested into for 13 years? And I know you can’t give advice on this necessarily. But in your opinion, would it be a good idea to take a loan from the pension funds to purchase real estate, even if the arbitrage is slightly upside down? Well, that’s interesting.
First off my question. Well, the first thing I want to say about this, Scott is I didn’t say that beginning investors and we work with investors on a wide spectrum. Some are experienced investors who are buying dozens and dozens of properties. Some are brand new investors. And during the, I guess the darkest phase of the pandemic, concerns in the question about, you know, where are we going? What is happening? Nobody knows. I did say that beginning investors who have just put together enough money to buy their first one or two properties should wait. And you know, everything would be just as good in terms of an opportunity in a month or two. But the view about the future would be clear at that time. Well, that has cleared, the smoke has cleared and we have a much much better idea of what’s happening and where we’re going now. Certainly nobody can predict the future. But I would certainly say that new investors are fine and dandy, they can start investing in real estate now. So I don’t think that’s a problem. I think the opportunity is fantastic at the moment. The interest rates are incredibly low. As you know, I did that analysis last week of how the cost of these properties on a monthly payment basis has actually declined. And right now, you get a 70% increase in buying power from your rich uncle Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So he’s all of our rich uncle. And so our rich uncle has given us a gift and hey, we should use it. It’s a it’s a great time, no question about it. It’s not going to be easy, though, I must tell you inventory is very scarce. It’s in short supply. And you need to be working with our investment counselors to find the right deals, the deals that make sense, we will help guide you to that through that. And of course, you can reach out to them through the Jason Hartman comm website. And if you’re in the US, you can call us at one 800. Hartman. Again, that’s a US only number for worldwide listeners, just reach out through the website, and we’ll get you taken care of. As for your question about the arbitrage? Well, I don’t know if the arbitrage is upside down. And I guess what you’re saying there, Scott, is, you know, maybe there’s an interest rate that you pay to borrow money from your retirement plan? I’m just not sure the specifics, because you didn’t you didn’t say in your message to us? So why would that arbitrage be upside down?
Here’s the way I would evaluate that, if you can earn 15 2025 30% when you consider the multi dimensional return on investment in the income property, and you can go and learn more about how that’s calculated at Jason hartman.com. The free video, the 27 minute video, right on the front page of our website, is really the best primer. And if you’ve watched that video once, and six months has gone by, you should watch it again. I’m not kidding, that is a foundational video that tells you how to analyze a deal. Okay, very, very important. Also, for newbies, remember, I don’t mention it much. But we do have a quickstart podcast that is really geared toward new investors. And you can look that up as well, just on any podcast platform type Jason Hartman quickstart. And I’m sure you’ll find that no problem. But if you can get the money out of your retirement plan, for a rate, maybe if you’re paying a penalty, or you’re paying interest to borrow it, I don’t know the details of your plan, or what, but you’re probably just paying that interest to yourself, in essence, because you’re borrowing it from yourself, and you are getting that money to be safe. At a total cost all things considered of less than 10 to 15%, then the arbitrage is is very much in your favor. And I think you should borrow the money. Some people even believe you should just liquidate your plan that these plans aren’t that good. And really, I don’t think they’re that good. Honestly, Tom wheelwright, the rich dad, author, speaker at our meet the Masters conference last year, in Newport Beach, California, and Garrett Sutton, who has spoken at many of our conferences been on the show many times another rich dead author, they both think that their retirement plans are just really not worth it. All things considered that you can make more money outside of them, even though you don’t get the tax benefits. And, and remember, income property is already a tax efficient vehicle. So I’m kind of in the middle, I don’t necessarily completely agree with them, that those plans are a bad deal. But I don’t think they’re as good as as many people say, oh, I’ll say that much about it. So take that for what it’s worth as far as resources.
Hey, this podcast, my YouTube channel, the live streams every Sunday, our live events, oh, by the way, so many of you, and thank you for your interest. By the way, I really love that you’re, you’re so interested in this, have been asking, when will the recordings of meet the Masters be available, many of you purchase them already. And you’ve been waiting for them patiently. And you know, we just want to do these nicely for you. Our producer says they will be finished today today. So all we have to do after that is get them posted on a platform so you can easily access them. There are over 30 different recordings. We’re also ripping that recording. So you not only have the video, but you have the audio. Because the audio is portable, we want to make this really convenient. You know, we don’t have to do any of this. We didn’t have to edit them. We didn’t have to categorize them, put them in chapters, make them nice and easy to access. We could have just given you that raw stuff. But you know, I just don’t like that when I buy a product like that. I just think, you know, that’s cheesy, they should make some effort. So, you know, we’ve spent a lot of time and money producing these so that they’re nice, convenient. You can access them in the audio and the video format. They’re categorized there. They’re titled, everything’s going to be nice for you to access. So we should have that all loaded into the platform. Maybe over the weekend or early next week, we’ll announce that for you. And for those of you who want to purchase them, we should have those available for you next week, as well. So we’ll share that link for you. And you can get a hold of them. Some really good stuff. They’re really good stuff.
And by the way, many of you have asked, you know, can you hear the asset protection webinar, the estate planning webinar, the tax saving webinar? Yes. Jason hartman.com, slash asset, Jason hartman.com, slash asset. Take advantage of that. And you’ve also asked about the funding webinar. And that’s it. Jason Hartman, there’s my dog, do you hear that? She moves like a cow. I don’t know if you can hear that. My dog is so loud when she sits down. It’s like, oh, plops down, I never heard anything like it. Other dogs did not do that. This one. It’s really funny. Anyway, anyway, I don’t know if you can hear that or not, but I sure heard it, the funding webinar, where you can get up to $250,000. In credit, business credit available for your business, for your real estate investing, whatever. That’s just easy. It’s Jason hartman.com slash fund, Jason hartman.com slash fund. If you’d like to access any of our other webinars on the Sweet Home Alabama market profile, Southwest Florida market profile, the Florida Georgia market profiles, Jacksonville, Florida, just ask your investment counselor, and they’ll be happy to give you those links. And, and we’ve also got a webinar on rent insurance, self directed IRA and 1031 exchange as well. So all of those resources available to you just reach out to our investment counselors, they’ll be happy to provide that info for you. So Scott, I hope that answers your question.
Let me see if I can just cover one more thing before our guest. Oh, this was interesting. Apple just passed the $2 trillion market cap the $2 trillion valuation mark, and the Wall Street Journal had an interesting comment on that. And here’s what it says I quote, okay, quote, all a $2 trillion valuation really means is that Apple investors are now willing to pay twice as much for the same earnings outlook, unquote. Now that was in the Wall Street Journal. And I find that to be a fascinating thing. Because if anything is a sign of a bubble, it is that exact situation. Here’s why. You’ve heard me talk over the years about the greater fool theory. And the greater fool theory is about speculative idiots gamblers, not investors, they’re not investors. They’re just gamblers speculators, really people making very stupid financial decisions. And amazingly, really intelligent, educated people who you think would know better. They get caught up in these manias to Okay, remember, what is it my commandment number 22? I believe I’m not looking at him. Thou shalt avoid manias. Okay. You know, we saw the Airbnb thing become a mania and I predicted it was a mania. That’s when I, that’s when I invented that commandment. And I set it on the radio right, you know, last early last year after our venture Alliance retreat in Savannah, Georgia. I said, Thou shalt avoid manias. And this is a stock market mania. Okay. I mean, why would an investor pay twice as much when no fundamentals have changed for the company? They have the same fundamentals they had when they had a $1 trillion dollar valuation? I’m not saying that Apple’s stock won’t increase and the company won’t become more valuable over time. Sure, it probably will if they have another home run if the asset shortage continues, etc, etc. Sure, but these fundamentals have not changed. It’s the same deal it was when the stock was half the price. You get it? It’s the greater fool theory.
What is the greater fool theory say? It says, no matter what I pay for this asset, this stock this property, this cryptocurrency, this Bitcoin, this gold ounce of gold, no matter what it is right? No matter what the asset is, no matter what pay some greater fool will come along and pay more. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not investing. That is amania. It’s the mob mentality. It’s, it’s just silliness. It’s stupid, okay. And so many investors succumb to that exact type of thing. Remember, commandment number five, the property must make sense the day you buy it, or the asset, whatever the asset is, doesn’t have to be a property. But we like properties the best obviously over here. So commandment number five really is Thou shalt not gamble. And the subtitle is the property must make sense that they you buy it or you don’t buy it. Now we are seeing a speculative mania form in some of these cyclical markets. But it’ll be temporary. I can say that with absolute certainty. But it’s going on a little bit, because these interest rates are so incredibly low. And the it’s just silliness. Okay, don’t get caught up in that. I remember reading this article in OSI Metro magazine when I lived in Newport Beach, California. And it talked about how Orange County was having a high rise, condo, boom. Now those of you have been to Orange County, orange on the Riviera, a very wealthy place. I lived there for pretty much all my adult life in 2011, when I escaped the Socialist Republic of California. And by the way, we have a lot more to talk about, about what’s going on in California. Leslie Appleton, young, the chief economist of California or chief economist of the California Association of Realtors, for I don’t know, she’s been there for a couple decades, at least. I mean, I met her in the 90s 25 years ago, probably when she spoke at the Association of Realtors there in Orange County. And even she thinks it’s a bubble. I interviewed her last week. And so we’ll have that interview. Maybe next week, we will publish that interview for you. And we talked for about an hour. And interesting. Leslie Appleton young, the chief economist of the California Association of Realtors. Guess where she moved to? Florida? Yes, you heard that right. I couldn’t believe it either. I even gave her a hard time about it. Before we started the interview, she lives in Sarasota, Florida. And it’s just, yeah, they’re doing everything they can to drive people out of that state. You know, but whatever. I remember reading this article about the the high rise condo boom in Orange County, which Orange County’s not very high rise ish. But they were building a few of them back then. And there was this guy on the cover. And he was this investor, quote, unquote. And I just wonder what happened to that guy. Obviously, he went broke. Okay, because, you know, his investments went down the tubes, they were terrible. They were speculative. And high rise condo was just never a good idea for so many reasons we’ve discussed over the years. But yeah, very, very interesting, folks. All right. So don’t be the greater fool. Don’t ever buy into the greater fool theory. It’s not a good idea. Not a good idea. We’re all about investing. We do prudent conservative things that make sense here. That’s what we’re here to help you with. Without further ado, let’s get to our guest.
It’s my pleasure to welcome Phil Harvey to the show. He is the author of five books, including welfare for the rich. That’s his newest work, how your tax dollars and up in millionaires pockets and what you can do about it, and also his last book, which is the human cost of welfare, how the system hurts people it is supposed to help. So welcome. How are you?
Phil Harvey 18:58
I’m well, and it’s good to be here.
Jason Hartman 19:00
Good. It’s good to have you on and you’re coming to us from outside Washington DC area, right?
Phil Harvey 19:05
That’s right.
Jason Hartman 19:06
Excellent, excellent. Well, what is going on with the system and how our tax payers getting burned by having welfare go to many of the wrong places.
Phil Harvey 19:17
It’s, it’s shocking, really the I think there can be a general agreement among people leaning left and waiting right on the political spectrum that the least fortunate among us in society deserve some help from the government. And indeed, there’s a very large program, particularly in the days of the pandemic, to assist those whose incomes are very sparse. But what shocks me and my co author Lisa Conyers, is the fact that so much of taxpayer money is going to parties who are extremely wealthy in some cases, billionaires And many, many millionaires and the corporations that they take part in for No, no reason except for the fact that various parties have lobbied effectively to get programs going and once a program gets going in Washington DC, is radically impossible to end it. So the
Jason Hartman 20:23
Milton Friedman said that so well, he said, I’ve never seen anything so permanent as a temporary government program.
Phil Harvey 20:31
Exactly right. And he couldn’t be more right. The best. The best story there, which included in our book, by the way, was the sheep and goat program that was introduced, because wool and mohair were badly needed during the Second World War for for making uniforms. Maybe men the First World War anyway, way back, and the government subsidized sheep and mohair, farmers and growers. Year after year after year, somebody would stand up in Congress and say the war is over. We don’t need this for uniforms anymore, let’s end this program and never got an end. And then finally sometime in the 90s, it was eliminated. For one year. Congress voted to simply and a program that was wasteful and unnecessary. And the next year, sure enough, it came back in a different format and the mohair. And well, folks are back on this on the subsidy train for absolutely no rational reason. Except for those people who benefit immediate from
Jason Hartman 21:46
These are the iron triangles that exist in so many parts of government probably just everywhere, at every level of government, state, federal local, it’s just someone who’s getting paid. And that’s why it just can never be efficient or properly allocated. It’s absolutely ridiculous. So talk to us more about these multimillionaires and billionaires and giant companies that are that are getting welfare. I mean, the common thought, I guess, Phil would be that, you know, look, you know, these people don’t get disability, they don’t get unemployment insurance. How are they getting welfare?
Phil Harvey 22:24
Well, the the most egregious example, I think, is in the farm program, farm bill, as it’s called, it’s been renewed every year for umpteen years now. And I think it started in the depression, when assistance to farmers actually was needed. And it made sense back then. But like so many other programs, the Farm Bill program, not counting the part that goes to food stamps, which is a separate subject, in many ways, gives away about $96 billion a year to farmers and farm interests, with very little attention paid to the wealth of those benefiting with a result that some of the largest farms and some of the largest agricultural corporations get most of the benefit. One telling example is a woman named Penny Pritzker, who was a billionaire. I mean, she inherited scans of money from a mill and Lumber Company in Chicago some some years ago. And doesn’t farm she isn’t a farmer, but she owns some property that is farmed or some at least some property that can be farmed and qualifies as agricultural land. Well, she got $1.6 million over a recent decade, just because she owned that property. Now this is not somebody who goes out and runs up reboring a machine or planting machine or gets your fingers, fingernails dirty. He just happens to own some property. She owns the property because she’s already well,
Jason Hartman 24:03
So what kind of subsidy does she get?
Phil Harvey 24:06
She gets a cash check just based on the fact that she owns property that is farmed or as farmable. There are dozens of these. Let me get a quick statistic here. 50, billionaire members of the Forbes 400 which pretty good about listing billionaires got $6.3 million in subsidies over a similar reason decade for no good reason. I mean, the idea that very, very wealthy people who haven’t own farm property should be getting taxpayer money is nuts.
Jason Hartman 24:47
Well, you know, just just just let me play devil’s advocate for a moment on that. So I’m a real estate investor and I teach people how to invest in real estate. We’ve been doing that for many years, almost 20 years now. And we’ve looked at farm deals, as you know, our investors have asked about, you know, what do you think about investing in farmland? And you know, Phil, the returns aren’t very good. It seems like a good idea. Everybody needs food, sort of on the face of it. farmland seems like something that it’s just a staple, right? But the actual returns on on investment are just pretty miniscule. So is that designed to help incentivize farming of land and the ownership of that land? I mean, it’s got to be owned by somebody and financed by somebody. Right? I don’t know, you know, maybe if they took that way, would there be less investment there? You know, the government, everybody responds to government incentives. I’m not saying it’s, it’s right. It’s just true.
Phil Harvey 25:45
Well, certainly the fact that farmland may not be a found or a wise investment for an outsider, is no argument against the fact that that people who own farm property, quite probably for other reasons, are getting these free, these free bonuses, for no particular reason without deserving it in any way, shape, or form.
Jason Hartman 26:09
Well, does he, does the land have to be actively farmed to get the incentive? Or can just be dormant land that’s not being farmed? That would worry me.
Phil Harvey 26:19
Yeah. Well, that that happens. There is a program under the farm bill that pays farmers to let certain acreage lie fallow for a period of time. This was well intentioned, but it does result from the fact that we’re paying some farmers not to grow anything at all for extended periods, which is on its face, shall we say? A little embarrassing? Yeah. But overall, this is simply picking the pockets of the American taxpayer to benefit very wealthy people. It makes no sense.
Jason Hartman 26:52
Do you address some of these tax schemes that companies like Apple and Amazon and Google are using to you know, basically evade taxes? I mean, they’re not technically evading taxes, because they’re just taking advantage of the laws that are out there. But seems ridiculous to me, that these incredibly wealthy companies, and incredibly wealthy executives or founders, can get away with what they’re doing, you know, by setting up these entities in different states and in different countries. It’s just ridiculous.
Phil Harvey 27:24
Well, I won’t argue that point. I think I think you’re quite right. We do not go into the complexities of the tax code for those kinds of companies in the book, but we do cover tax advantages of the sort that clearly involve taking taxpayer money and subsidizing or non taxpayers. My favorite example of this is the Walt Disney Company, which owns some some acreage in Florida, I presume somewhere near their, their entertainment sites, disneyland Disney World, and, and, and so on, where they rent cows. They actually don’t.
Jason Hartman 28:08
There’s like a rule in Texas where you can get a huge break on your property taxes, if you just put at least one cow on that land.
Phil Harvey 28:16
Well, there you are. We’re asking people to do something that’s not productive, it’s stupid, it’s simply unjustified. That kind of thing happens. A great mill.
Jason Hartman 28:27
Give us some more examples of you when we talked about the Farm Bill, we talked about the wall, what else is happening? And then let’s make sure we cover what we can do about it before we wrap it up.
Phil Harvey 28:37
Okay, well, an area that is much less well known because the impact is harder to to evaluate at a glance is the zoning rules. This is particularly burdensome right now, in a country with a severe job shortage is facing great difficulties in getting people back to work and in the homes that they can live in. zoning, particularly on both coasts, also, especially coastal cities in California have zoned their cities in such a way that housing is simply become unaffordable to the average person, you cannot move to San Francisco, for example, and try to rent or, or buy but usually rent a place to live unless you’re pretty rich start. Sure. And the result, the result is that we’re reducing the number of jobs, we’re forcing people who go to cities like that because there is work available and ending up 100 miles out in a suburb somewhere where they can afford housing and this is badly inhibiting the employability of many
Jason Hartman 29:52
I agree with you. But the environmentalists would say you know, we can’t have any more people you know, it’s just it’s too crowded. We see this all over these dedicated open spaces under the guise of it being for the environment. But what that really does is keep people out of the housing market. I call that environmental racism. And I had Thomas Sol on my show years ago, I coined that term, actually, during that interview with Thomas Sol. And what do you say to them, though, you know, it’s, uh, you know, all this development is bad for the environment, right?
Phil Harvey 30:25
Well, it’s certainly fine to have open spaces, but you can’t have big open spaces in the places where the jobs are, people will go to find work. That’s a universal, universal phenomenon. And if you make housing on affordable at or near the places where the jobs are, you’re simply shooting yourself in the foot.
Jason Hartman 30:48
Well, so what what would San Francisco do, for example. Would they build more high rises to house more people? What can be done?
Phil Harvey 30:55
Absolutely. They would build more high rises, they would build them multifamily homes of various kinds, a lot of zoning is for single family homes only, which of course gobbles up enormous amounts of land per occupant.
Jason Hartman 31:09
Right. But San Francisco is completely built out. I mean, there’s no vacant land in San Francisco. So what do you
Phil Harvey 31:17
One simple way of adding to the housing availability in San Francisco would be to allow all existing buildings to add one more story? This would make a significant difference. But there are rules in San Francisco against doing that.
Jason Hartman 31:31
Well, that’s because they want to keep they don’t want the density to be any higher. You know, they don’t want it to affect people’s views and all kinds of you know, you’ve got all these conflicting interests, right.
Phil Harvey 31:45
Certainly you do. And, and a lot of it comes from the NIMBY folks. They’re not in my backyard, right phenomenon where
Jason Hartman 31:53
And that backyard is becoming bigger and bigger, by the way, right? Yes, yeah.
Phil Harvey 31:56
Yeah. And then the value of those those homes that exists there Now, of course, are shot up so that the people, the people who own those single-family homes have done extremely well.
Jason Hartman 32:09
Yeah. But I mean, say you just keep building and building. I mean, everybody will just keep coming. You know, I’m a big fan of john Denver’s music, and he has this lyric in one of his songs where he’s talking about Colorado, and the lyric is more people, more scars upon the land. So how do you weigh these interests? They’re opposing interests. I mean,
Phil Harvey 32:30
If if you consider people to be scars upon the land,
Jason Hartman 32:34
Oh, I don’t, I don’t I think people listen, I’m not a Malthusian but I’m just done parroting their arguments. I mean, you know, the left argues against development. They argue against providing housing to people and they argue for open spaces, you can’t have both you have to choose. They’re directly opposing interest, right?
Phil Harvey 32:55
They often are, I completely agree. And if you want people to be able to work and thrive and prosper, you have to allow housing to be built. I’m all for open spaces, but they don’t need to be in places where they compete with, with housing for worker.
Jason Hartman 33:13
Yeah. But you know, I’m from I don’t live there now. But I’m from Southern California. And so I lived in Newport Beach for many years. One of the things in Newport Beach and also in neighboring Irvine. I don’t know if you’re familiar with those cities. You know, Irvine is a very masterplan city. And, you know, they’ve got all these dedicated open spaces. And, you know, there’s a vibrant economy there. I mean, you know, it’s a, it’s a high end area, all these open spaces, just simply served to create a housing shortage, but it’s beautiful. I mean, you know, I remember all my friends, circulating fliers save Crystal Cove State Beach, don’t let them develop it. You know, they were so against it. And I thought, you know, basically, your whole argument is, you’ve already got yours. So don’t share with anybody else. Right, keep other people out and prop up your housing prices. It’s like that old old riddle, right. What do you call a developer? Someone who wants to build a house at the beach or in the woods? What do you call an environmentalist? Someone who already has a house at the beach or in the woods? Yeah. So what do you do about it? Right?
Phil Harvey 34:22
That’s exactly right. Well, I mean, there are compromises that have to be made. I would not suggest that. That is entirely without parks, for example, we need to make living in cities and working in cities, reasonably attractive. I’m all for that. But you don’t have to zone people out of affordable housing. I mean, the city of Houston, for example, has no zoning of any kind. And people’s, you know, say with great horror, imagine having no zoning well, Houston has no zoning, they they brag about it.
Jason Hartman 34:55
But Houston, Houston is rather nice. I mean, we you know, I own property. I know Yeah, it’s quite nice. Yeah.
Phil Harvey 35:02
You don’t need zoning to have a nice livable city. In any event, I certainly agree with your term racial zoning is has has been the result.
Jason Hartman 35:12
Environmental racism. Yeah.
Phil Harvey 35:13
Environmental racism.
Jason Hartman 35:14
Spread the word. Spread the word. Yeah. Now really people have to know about it, because it’s, it’s really unfair. It really is. You know, you’ve got a couple of other maybe touch points. Just before we wrap it up that I want to ask you about, you know, you talked about housing, you’ve got, you know, food steps, missteps with women and children, you know, we disabled the disabled. Do you want to touch on any of those as we wrap it up?
Phil Harvey 35:38
Well, I would I would mention just one more program related to agriculture. But it’s a it’s a basically a different program. And that’s the sugar program, because it’s one of the most egregious of government subsidy efforts. Everybody pays about twice as much for sugar and sugar containing products, every time they go to the supermarket twice as much as they should have to pay because sugar in America costs double the world price. This is done for the benefit of really a very small number of very wealthy sugar bear and who grow sugar cane primarily in Florida, man and pet a father who was another billionaire benefiting from government policies, and even people who are too poor to be paying any kind of federal income tax or below the tax level, still have to buy groceries. So virtually everyone in America is subsidizing pay pay fundable? And who’s a billionaire is one of the most obscenely unfair programs that the government takes part in.
Jason Hartman 36:52
Should we eliminate lobbyists? I mean, a lot a lot of this is a result of lobbying, of course,
Phil Harvey 36:57
We can’t eliminate lobbyists, because the First Amendment of the Constitution specifies that one can represent one one’s case in front of the government. It’s a very fundamental American right. There are ways of making lobbying, a little less intense. But it’s a it’s an uphill battle, and one that requires an alarm citizenry, I think, an extent that we may have difficulty achieving.
Jason Hartman 37:30
And I agree with you. Give out your website and tell people where they can find out more.
Phil Harvey 37:35
Well, welfare for the rich has its own website called welfarefortherich.org. And you can find out a lot about the book there is available on Amazon, and a great many other places. And we hope you’ll have a look at it and learn just how much of your money is going to how many very, very wealthy parties.
Jason Hartman 37:57
Excellent. Phil Harvey, thank you so much for joining us.
Phil Harvey 38:00
My pleasure. I enjoyed it.
Jason Hartman 38:07
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