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Published January 14, 2015
This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," May 5, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GLENN BECK, HOST: So last night I was — I was at the "Time 100" dinner last and I was sitting with some very influential people and some very un- influential people — people like Jeff Klein from Time magazine.
Anyway, these people — a lot of them were not conservative, some of them were. Naturally, the conversation at the kiddie's table where I was seated, you know, kind of went down the road of: So Glenn, I guess you need all the controversy to survive, right?
No.
What are you going to do now that the economy has turned around? Yes, well — I mean, the economy is in cycles. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
What is the engine for the upward cycle? We have no manufacturing anymore. We're handcuffing Wall Street. I mean I don't think we should have been in the paper business in the first place. We're about to shut down the energy sector with cap-and-trade.
What is it that the unions are organizing to help us do? Nobody really has an idea. One guy finally says, Well, I'm hoping that the green economy will. Yes, I mean, I'm like please. I am, too. I am, too. But I don't have a definition of the green economy. Do you?
Nobody does. Nobody really has an — no, I'm sorry. The progressive Wizard of Oz, Joel Rogers, actually gave us an answer on what the green economy is:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOEL ROGERS, POLITICAL ACTIVIST: I hope you all realize that you could eliminate every power plant in America today and you could stop every car in America. Take out the entire power generation sector. Take out all of the transportation sector and you still wouldn't be anywhere near 80 percent below 1990 levels. You would be closer to 60 percent. You'd be at around 68 percent. And that is bringing the economy to a complete halt, basically.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: Basically. Basically.
He also said as we played for you a few minutes ago that Cisco and G.E. will get rich on this. You see, people in the elite class don't understand the debt. We have conned ourselves into thinking that debt is not a problem. It's not. Your house, my house, it's not.
Until you accumulate so much, there is no way you can pay it off. But we're somehow or another going to create a green economy that is going to pay this debt off — $12.9 trillion, America's debt right now. $107 trillion in unfunded liabilities. To add it up: $119.9 trillion.
So how do we pay this off? *Well, we stick it to the rich. The richest 1 percent, they're not paying their fair share!*
Oh, I don't know. In 2007, how many taxpayers were there? 96.4 million taxpayers — that's how many people are paying taxes.
So, how much would we have to have these people pay to be able to pay this off? How much do you have to pay?
Well, at a federal tax rate, which is about 10 percent higher than it is now, 45 percent. If you paid taxes, don't worry. We can pay this off next year. You have to make $2.7 million. That's it. No biggie, OK?
You might want to brush up on your hitting a curveball, you know, 400 feet, because outside of professional sports and — well, you could run Goldman Sachs or operate a hedge fund, run a progressive think tank. You know, not a lot of professionals that — I don't know if we could find 96.4 million people to make that here.
By the way, you know how everybody always wanted you to be a doctor? My mom was like, Maybe he'll be a doctor. No, I'm going in radio, mom. Oh, my son is a loser. How much does a brain surgeon make? The average brain surgeon makes $458,000. Brain surgeons, not pulling their weight.
But we could raise the tax rate to 70 percent. If we raise the tax rate to 70 percent — don't worry, because then everybody just has to earn $1.7 million.
Isn't that great? I think that's about what the average Wal-Mart greeter makes now but I'm a little out of touch. Think of the pension packages we could all have if we just unionized. We could stick it to the man and make more than 1.7.
Look, here is the thing: You know and I know it can't happen. There is no way. We can't all of a sudden become millionaires, unless we start to sell air. You know, they're already doing that one.
Our government is backing us into a wall, into a hole. This is what they mean when they say it's unsustainable. It's what Greece is figuring out right now. Do you know three people died today in Greece because of the rioting? They're burning — they're burning buildings. They are rioting in the street. Three people died.
This morning, by the time I walked in, at 7 o'clock, three were dead. Un-sustainability of Europe. But now, here comes the Lone Ranger riding in on his white horse — the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. Boy, I feel warm already.
Now, that the IMF is involved, I just wish I knew exactly who the IMF was. Do you have any idea? Yes. Here is the chart of the commitments and the contributions of the various member nations of the IMF, because see, we all are part of the IMF.
These are the people that gave the money to bail Greece out, because the unions were the ones in the streets today. That was a union riot. United States paid 17.1 percent of the burden for the rest of the world. That is the heaviest burden of any single nation on Earth.
Yet, who runs this thing? We have 17 percent. Hey, maybe we can get one of those cool Greek statues because we now own 17 percent of it. If Europe goes down, we are on the hook for 17.1 percent in theory.
In reality, we're not going to let Europe go down. No, no, no. We can't. They're too big to fail. We'll have to contribute more and more and more to prevent their demise.
You're already on the hook for this mess in Greece and Europe. In fact, when AIG got $180 billion of your tax money, do you know how much of that wound up going to European banks? European banks? Why is nobody talking about this? Why is nobody in the media on this European banks? $30 billion of your money to Europe.
I've told you many times about mutually assured economic destruction. It was something that started in the 1960s. In 1962, it was announced. Mutual — to stop nuclear war, the theory was tie all of our economies together. Well, my friends at the Time 100 dinner absolutely had no concept of any of this. Yes, and they're much smarter, too.
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