RUSH: I think what's called for, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief history of pensions. It was General Motors and the United Auto Workers who started the first pension plan in the US. There were some railroad workers who had them prior to that. But the main concept, the big-time pension concept started with UAW and General Motors. Why? Very simple reason. Before World War II there were very few pensions. As I say, mostly railroads. But pensions, like health care, were offered by companies like General Motors during World War II to attract better employees, and this happened because of FDR's wage freeze. So there was a freeze on wages, which meant by definition you couldn't pay people more than X, but yet you needed to attract good employees.
So a way was devised to exceed FDR's wage freeze, and that was health care benefits and pensions. They had no other way to compete. Now, the reason wage controls and price controls never work -- and I love this example -- back in 1972, Richard Nixon, when we had I think 3% inflation, or 3% unemployment, it was not bad at all but we were in the middle of a faux oil embargo, instituted wage and price controls. Yet when you went to the grocery store, things still seemed to cost more and the way that happened was very simple. The butcher would simply devise at the meat counter a new cut that came into existence after the price control was placed on beef, and he could price it whatever he wanted. It was new and not subject to the price control until the price was established.
So just to pick one, the bone-in rib eye, I have no idea if that existed before Nixon or not, but say it had not existed, the bone-in rib eye, all of a sudden the butcher makes a new cut, the bone-in rib eye and charges X for it, and that is how the butcher in a meat market or the supermarket got around the price controls. Similarly when it came to wages, hello stock options, hello pension plans, health care health care benefits, hello all of that stuff, government attempting to control always runs up against creative entrepreneurs who will find ways around it. So FDR institutes a wage freeze, and in World War II, companies that need qualified workers start to offer attractive employment packages to get good qualified people, and so they started to attract pensions and health care benefits.
And I think, folks, that the pension General Motors history is a good point to reiterate because most people don't realize what a new idea public pensions are. It's just since World War II, when the country and US businesses were flush. They had very little competition. Now, in 1980 there were approximately 250,000 qualified, defined benefit pension plans covered by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. By 2005 there are now less than 80,000 qualified plans. So in 25 years we've gone from 250,000 qualified, defined benefit pension plans to less than 80,000 qualified, defined pension plans. God knows how many there are now. It's gonna be less than 80,000 now because 2005 is six years ago, and probably most of them are union or public sector union pension plans. That's how all this got started, price controls and wage controls, pure and simple.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Health care benefits came out of price controls. It's a perfect example of unintended consequences. Health care benefits and pensions coming out of price controls and wage controls is a great example of unintended consequences. And then they just caught on, and then, once they caught on, it became clear what they were, money laundering schemes. Simply a way for the Democrat Party to engineer money circuitously ending up back under it's control. The way that works is quite simple. Let's go back to Wisconsin. Citizen A pays taxes from work he does in the private sector. Some of those taxes are state taxes. Those taxes combined with the taxes of other citizens in Wisconsin pay the salaries of state workers in Wisconsin. Those state workers are members of unions, as such, they pay dues. So tax revenue from citizens in Wisconsin ends up as union dues, which end up in the Democrat Party. Money laundering operation, pure and simple.
I mean how much money do you think union dues goes to the Republicans? And that takes us to the first Obama stimulus. Who got the money? Obama is now even laughing about the fact that there weren't that many private sector shovel-ready jobs. The people that got the money in the stimulus plan were primarily women who worked for state and local governments. That's who got the money, so that they would not be laid off during the recession, and the reason it was important they not be laid off is because they paid dues. They're union members. So the stimulus plan was a slush fund whose ultimate purpose was to see that the $787 billion that was spent was largely returned to the Democrat Party and then spread out among various candidates from Obama on down to whoever qualified for it based on their ranking within the Democrat Party.
There wasn't any private sector job creation with Obama's stimulus. There was simply saving state jobs. Now, that stimulus money's gone, it's been spent, and there have now been layoffs. You see what happened in Wisconsin. The stimulus money ran out, and look what happened, a new Republican governor had to go and say, "You know, we don't have any money here and we're gonna have to make some changes here in collective bargaining." The Ponzi scheme had finally dried up, and it's going to happen in other states in time, hence Obama's jobs speech Thursday requesting another stimulus, which will be another money laundering operation intended for Democrat reelection campaign funds. It will not be about private sector job creation because, ladies and gentlemen, it is not possible for the government to take a dollar out of the private sector and grow it at the same time. The math simply doesn't work.
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