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Published January 23, 2017
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING "Cost of Freedom Recap" CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS WHICH ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF THE OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE WHEN MAKING PERSONAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS. IT IS FOX NEWS' POLICY THAT CONTRIBUTORS DISCLOSE POSITIONS THEY HOLD IN STOCKS THEY DISCUSS, THOUGH POSITIONS MAY CHANGE. READERS OF "Cost of Freedom Recap" MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN INVESTMENT DECISIONS.
Arizona Primaries to Stress Illegal Immigration and Impact on Jobs
John Layfield: Yeah, of course it will. You know, forget what is right or wrong here, simple economic category and this has precedence, 1986, Ronald Reagan give amnesty to three million illegal. You saw an influx, record amount in the following years coming across the border. I grew up on a ranch. I grew up working on a ranch in sweet water, Texas, with illegals. But one of the reasons the ranchers could make money is they're able to pay such a low wage for the illegals. You add more illegals to that equation; it's just a matter of economics that you're going to keep wages artificially low for a very long time.
Gary B. Smith: I agree. And look, john points out some good anecdotal evidence, but the fact of the matter is, immigration's effect on wages and plan has been studied since immigrants have been coming to the country. You can find some studies where wages go up 2 percent, some studies where wages come down 2 percent. If you took the consensus of all the studies, the net effect of immigrants is zero. The same with unemployment rates. If you looked at unemployment amongst immigrants and unemployment amongst Native Americans, it almost goes in lock step. You'd think just the opposite. Immigrants went up; unemployment of Native Americans went down. Part of the reason and everyone forgets is when immigrants come in the country, they come in as consumers. So they're spending more money increasing maybe not the prosperity of john's ranchers, but the prosperity in other industries, food services, retail, and things like that. So the net effect is almost zero.
Suzy Welch: You know, there's been a long debate about the illegal immigrants, same say it's a wash, we've heard that already and some people say that the cost is up to $400 billion when it comes to education and hospitalizations and who knows who's right or wrong, even if you average these, there's net effect of zero and $400 billion, there is a cost, there is an economic cost, but you no e what, we're talking about the economic impact, i don't see this as an economic debate. We have two other bigger issues against me, one is that do we have a country with borders that mean anything and are we a nation of laws? I mean, there are definitely going to be economic impacts. But these issues seem bigger to me, and i think we need to think about those before we go to the economic impact.
Jonas Max Ferris: I'm not going to disagree with the illegal legal part of it, a lot are working now, i don't know if making them legal is going to affect stuff, but these politicians, these candidates i should say, have pandered themselves into the most ridiculous flip-flop. If you own a business, to Gary's point, you want more customers and more labor. That's what you want. Lower the wages and raise the amount of customers, when you're in labor, you want less labor, less competition, that's the whole point of unions and what democrats typically want. Right now we want democrats saying they want more immigration and you have republicans saying we need less. That is completely the opposite of what businesses want and what labor wants, it's totally flip-flopped.
Nomi Konst: Well, I think what they're trying to do, the programs that president Obama brought is they're trying to legalize, take these people out of the shadows. They still contribute $11.8 Billion in U.S. Taxes. State and local per year. You've got the possible by taking them out of the shadows, that's $230 billion a year. That's crazy. It's a crazy amount of money that'll go into our economy. You know 29,000 jobs a year. There's a huge economic impact by taking the people out of the shadows. We're going to talk about border problems? We have deported more people under president Obama than any other president in history. We don't have an influx of illegal immigrants anymore. It's actually negative, and more people going back to Mexico and the Dominican Republican right now because of the restrictions that have been set up at the border. I'm from Arizona, I've seen it, we have built an economy around protecting the border rather than around the shadows of immigrants.
Apple, FBI Set to Face Off in Court Over San Bernardino Terrorist's Phone
Gary B. Smith: Absolutely, Dagen. Look, in my opinion we're fighting a modern day World War called World War III 2.0 If you will. The FBI is trying to help the United States win that war at a minimum, be safe. Apple is critical to that. You know, in World War II, Dagen, the government conscripted entire industries to help us win the war. I think apple can do its part to help us out.
Suzy Welch: Right. Well, look, true confession right up front. I see both sides of the debate and intellectually speaking, this is a war shack about how much you trust the government and sometimes I think I have nothing to hide, what do I care? And then I think, if Bernie Sanders gets elected, the IRS is going to find a reason to audit me because i whined about government regulation, but the noise many my head goes completely silent when i imagine the elementary school or the subway system that is blown to smithereens by one of the terrorists from the San Bernardino shootings. When they find that name in the San Bernardino shooters phone. And that is, that's what's coming. You know, that's the consequence of giving equal liberty to terrorists. Gary's right, we are at war with the terrorists and they do not deserve the prestige of good citizens. Apple needs to help out.
John Layfield: And I think there's a reason, look, I don't trust the government with this information, but I am on the same side as all Americans as we are against ISIS and against terror attacks. But to Gary's point, declare war. There's a big difference in saying going after a person that is an alleged terrorist. This one's easy, black and white. Give him this phone, take it apart, figure out what's inside of it. What happens when you go down the line, its a slippery slope. I'm with apple on this. There's a month to break into this phone and fix the back door. Who's going to pay for that, by the way, the terrorist in Europe was caught because of an old gun shoot detective technique of a fingerprint of an apartment they raided.
Nomi Konst: And I find telephone interesting because there's this culture in silicon valley, so on one hand, they don't to want answer to the government, you're there to protect us, we have a right to security in this country. Strangely enough, we don't have a right to privacy because, you know, you have the right to search and seizure, but what's going on with apple right now is that they're willing to sell information to companies, but they're not willing to give this information to the government. And you know, they're saying that if they open it up for the government, it's suddenly going to be open for hackers from other countries. You know, there has to be a way here, I think they're using games and that's why the president wants the south by southwest to recruit them and come to work for the government like they did in the forties and World War II.
Jonas Max Ferris: They're telling us stuff we don't understand. It's all garbage anyway, I'm not for a back door that the government will snoop at will, but you're talking about making a legitimate request to a company. Let me tell you. It is easy to make the case, yeah, they should do it because of terrorism. Forget terrorism, every company in the world has to deal with government garbage. The tech industries are prima donnas. If you're an investment advisor, you come by all this stuff, it's called you're in business.
New Calls for Presidential Candidates to Make Nation's Debt a Priority
Suzy Welch: Not any of these candidates they are not talking about it. The number is gigantic and it's scary and moving, but this election, nobody wants to talk about cutting the national debt because that's just another way about talking about cutting social security and Medicare and Medicaid and there's just too many voters who care about those things not being cut. And the candidates know it, but we're not going to hear about that until after the election and is that a good thing? Of course not, but politics doesn't bring out the truth in candidates, we all know that.
Gary B. Smith: Absolutely. I'm afraid we're on the fast path to that crisis. We are third in the world in terms of debt to tax revenues. We're only, we have 408 percent in that number. You know where we're behind, we're only behind Greece and Japan. My gosh. We're being compared with Greece for crying out loud you look at all major empires, decline, one of the reasons is debt, and we're on the road to decline.
Nomi Konst: Listen, we all know that presidential candidates, campaign and poetry, hopefully government, some don't, some do, the past four or five presidents, each presidents has had their own version of increasing the debt, whether it's increasing social security, growing Medicare and Medicaid or the defense budget. This is why a lot of republicans are frustrated. The establishment hasn't responded to their needs, whether it's their income.
Jonas Max Ferris: These programs grow themselves at this point. You don't need to vote to increase them. The election year is about giving, and I will say, we saw a little bit of talk about not giving the tax cuts we candidate afford or spending we can't afford. Kasich talks about it, he's not doing well. How about the guy on the republican side who has a one year out with the social security, boom, he's gone. We don't talk about cutting these programs and you want to get elected.
John Layfield: Sure it is. And poetry, I've never heard more banter in my entire life. It's like they're running for sixth grade student council. It's unbelievable. We'll be about $30 trillion in debt. That's not worst case, that's based upon the democrats and republicans budget. That is what we are on track for. That is on average interest rate a trillion and a half dollars a year. We will spend on interest alone, put that into our country. This is a huge thing that no one's talking about.
Stock Picks
Gary B. Smith: (HD) Home Depot 20 percent gains by the end of the year
John Layfield: (VZ) Verizon up 20 percent in 1 year
Jonas Max Ferris: (GT) Goodyear up 50 percent in 1 year
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/immigration-and-jobs-in-focus-ahead-of-arizona-primary