50:53 and then we'll be able to mass produce and inoculate the American people and the people of the world for that matter with these vaccines. They're trying to do the same exact thing again. It's unbelievable that this media and these leftists have the audacity to do this after we know what happened in 2020. I just hope that Donald Trump doesn't fall for it again folks. We're coming up on a break and In the next hour, we're going to get into more news clips analysis. We're going to talk a little bit about the H1B visa stuff, more about this pandemic, more about World War III, more about escalations in Ukraine. In the meantime, please go to thealexjonesstore.com. You can get our supplements, our gummies for up to 50% off.
51:30 The belief that somehow or other government can spend money at nobody's expense I don't know how many of you have ever heard of a wonderful description of government that was made by a French economist by the name of Frédéric Bastiat about 150 years ago. He said, government is that fiction whereby everybody believes that he can live at the expense of everybody else. And that is the free lunch myth. The myth that somehow or other government can provide goods and services, can spend money at nobody's expense.
52:36 Now, the particular form which that myth takes is very specific. It has two parts. One part is a belief that somehow or other you can tax business without consumers or workers or individuals paying for it. Somehow business is a big source, a big cornucopia out there that can be taxed at no cost. And the other way to form the myth takes is that you can create money at no cost. That if you turn the printing press, if you produce those greenbacks, that will enable people to become richer with nobody becoming poorer. Well, let me look at first problem. Can you tax business? What's business? There's no business to be taxed. There are people. Only people can pay taxes. Can I tax this floor? Can I tax the building? The building can't pay taxes.
53:34 Only people can pay taxes. So when you talk about a tax on business, it has to be paid by somebody. Either it's paid by the stockholder, or it's paid by the customer, or it's paid by the worker. There's no other way it can come from. There's no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy that's going to provide a source by which the government can spend money that doesn't come from somebody. Somebody has to pay. And yet,
54:11 Over and over again you hear the claim, oh, we cannot, we must not increase taxes on individuals, we'll increase taxes on business. In connection with the current discussion of Social Security, this fiction arises. There is a fiction that the Social Security tax is half on the individual and half on the employer. It's that the individual only pays 5.75%, the employer pays an equal amount, That's nonsense. That's bookkeeping. That's not economics. That's not reality. The part that the employer pays is part of his wage cost. If an employer considers whether it's worth his while to hire an additional worker, he has to consider as part of his cost not only what he pays to the worker, but also the extra taxes he will have to pay to the government. It makes no difference to the employer at all.
55:09 If he pays the worker a bigger check and the worker pays a larger part of that directly to the government, or he pays a worker a smaller check, but in addition has to send a check to Washington. What matters to him is a total number of dollars it costs him to hire an additional person. So the fact is, the logic is, the reason is, that the tax on, the so-called tax on the employer is paid by the employee. Now this has always been clear. from economic reasoning, general economic reasoning, but it has also been subjected to empirical test. And a book even from that high... from that tempo of belief in greater and bigger government, the Brookings Institution in Washington, published a couple of years ago, demonstrated empirically
56:05 that the tax on the employer was really paid by the employee, that it was shifted to the employee. And it can't be any other way. We're gonna get into more analysis and breaking news on the other side. That's Milton Friedman there you're listening to. He was the first, the greatest economist at speaking in front of college audiences, taking questions from college audiences, and just totally wrecking any criticisms of capitalism. I mean, if you think Ben Shapiro's good at debating. If you think Stephen Crowder is good at debating or Charlie Kirk's good at debating or Miley Yiannopoulos is good at debating, Milton Friedman was incredibly talented at debating on economics and the virtues of capitalism specifically. Stay with us for more on the other side.