CW 464 – Dr. Ben Carson – What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future with 2016 US Presidential Candidate

Today on the Creating Wealth show, Jason returns from the Meet the Masters event and tells his listeners that he still believes that investing within the United States is your best option as oppose to internationally. He also introduces his guest Dr. Ben Carson on the show where they talk about the medical system, debt, big government, and Ben’s latest book entitled One Nation.

Key Takeaways:

2:00 – Should you invest internationally or nationally?

7:10 – Arthur C Clarke once said, “The only thing we can be sure about the future is that it’ll be absolutely fantastic.”

9:45 – Touches a little bit on the Meet the Masters event.

12:45 – We have so many bad examples of what big government is, yet history keeps repeating itself.

15:00 – Dr. Ben Carson talks about alternatives that would make the medical system better.

18:00 – Ben talks about what his latest book, One Nation, is about.

22:10 – Detroit is the poster child for big government disaster.

25:45 – If we just obey, then the government wins by default.

29:25 – The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, which is why businesses are taking their locations overseas instead.

33:00 – Ben talks about how you can get enough courage to take control and achieve your American dream.

Tweetables:

The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.

It’s not the free American that I knew growing up.

We have to stop going along to get along.

Mentioned In This Episode:

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis

CW 267: Technological Optimism with Steven Kotler Author of ‘Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think’

http://realbencarson.com/

Transcript:

Jason Hartman:

Hey, welcome to the Creating Wealth show. This is your host Jason Hartman. This is episode 464. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m coming to you from San Diego, California here after the Meet the Masters for a couple of days. Got a little of business here and a few things to do before I head back home. Just wanted to present this episode today, which is Dr. Ben Carson. He is a neurosurgeon also a political candidate, so he’s going to talk about how to save America.

You know, I always kind of wonder how much saving America really needs. Like I’ve said many times before, if you look at the math and if you look at some of the obligations this country has, it needs a lot of saving, but then you look outside the math and all the things America has going for, which are pretty tremendous too, I don’t know, I just don’t know, but certainly one of the things we talked in depth this last weekend at the Meet the Masters event is American real estate versus international real estate and when we had Diane Kennedy speak about some things.

She does some offshore planning for some of her clients as a CPA also advising the Monson asset protection strategies and, you know, the one thing that we can come back to just over and over again, even after I’ve interviewed dozens of dozens of guest on my Jet Setter show and I know many of you listen to that podcast as well on the subject of international investing and real estate overseas. It just, I mean, nothing even comes close for the American opportunity for real estate investing. Remember what I say, income property or real estate in general is basically been subsided since the great depression. So, many of us get disappointed, discouraged, and upset about Obamacare, about welfare, about people getting disability benefits by faking their way into it.

You know, Dan Amerman, who’ve I had on the show many times talks about how we’ve never seen so many young, seemingly healthy people who have suddenly become disabled when their unemployment

benefits end. You know, all of this is obviously a huge problem. With that said, if you want a hand out, if you want to take advantage of some of this government largest as a real estate investor, just go get a loan. A Fannie Mae type agency loan or Feddie Mac type agency loan and their are your government perks and your government hand outs. So, it’s really true.

Around the world one of our speakers said this last weekend at Meet the Masters of income property was that around the world, there are only two places on planet earth where out of, what, 192 to 210 countries depending on who you’re talking to and how you define a country, where you can get a thirty year mortgage. It’s truly an incredible opportunity. Think of it. If you buy income property today and if you keep that income property for hopefully 27.5 years and you know why I say that. Those of you in the know know that that’s the deprecation schedule. If you keep that income property through the deprecation schedule or even through 30 years when you make the last payment, or I should say your tenant, because you’ve outsourced the debt, makes the last payment on the mortgage, you won’t pay that mortgage off until 2045. 2045.

Now, these projections show that by 2045 instead of being around 310 million people in the country, there will be around 400 million people in the United States by then. Think what’s that going to do for housing demand, think what’s going to do for rental housing demand. At Meet the Masters, my opening key note session I talked about this demographic tidal wave coming at rental housing, which is easily been the best it’s ever been in US history out of, what, 200 and some odd years the country has been around. The tidal wave, the demographic tidal wave, coming at rental housing right now over the next decade is nothing short of a miracle. A phenomenal opportunity for investors.

Generation Y, the largest demographic cohort in US history. Larger than the baby boomers by a small margin of 4 million people. Putting off marriage, putting off household formation, need mobility to go where the jobs are, saddled with huge student loan debt, and during the reformative years, mostly teenage years, seeing their parents get burned in the great recession and in the housing sub-prime crisis. I mean, all those things and more add up to a phenomenal demographics coming at rental housing over the next decade. So, you take that plus you take the fact that you can keep that mortgage for 3 decades. 3 decades! Till 2045 where we’re going to have another 100 million people almost in the country, where we’re going to have massive increases in housing demand and probably massive, massive amounts of inflation and benefiting from inflation induced debt destruction. All of these coalesce to create the perfect storm for investors.

So, take advantage of that. If you do the math, then you know, if you just look at the country’s math, yes, American needs a lot of saving. It needs a lot of fixing and I agree with that, that’s true, certainly from a mathematical perspective, but from a leadership in the world stage perspective, from a reserve currency perspective, from a biggest military and bully perspective, wow. The US has the huge advantage and giant trump card from that perspective.

So, who knows the way it’ll call go, no body knows. You know, when I was flying to Aruba I guess a little over a month ago now. I was looking through the airline magazine and I saw this fantastic quote, it was on an ad, by Arthur C Clarke; the futurist, the science fiction guy. I remember reading a lot of his work when I was a kid way back in 1965 he said, “The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.” Let me repeat that, “The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic.” He said that in 1964 and I would say that even so far, not predicting out into any more in the future beyond what we’ve already experienced since 1964. It has been absolutely fantastic. I mean, could we have ever imagine the kind of incredible innovations since we’ve seen since then.

Now, if we just allow free people in free markets to innovate to let their creativity flourish. If we get the intrusive companies invading our privacy and collecting our data, if we keep them at bay, if we keep the over-reaching dictatorial power-hungry government and politicians at bay; if we keep the war-loving bankers and bankers in general at bay, if we keep the Wall Street crooks at bay; we keep the fake environmentalist at bay who want to control our every move; if we keep the terrorists who want us to live in the 7th century at bay, and we allow free people and free markets to do their thing. If we step back and keep all these forces at back, Arthur C Clarke is right, the future will be absolutely fantastic.

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, we did a show on them before, I think it was maybe episode, let me look it up here, episode 267. Isn’t that unbelievable? That was almost 200 episodes ago. It feels like it was fairly recent, but it was almost 200 episodes ago here on the show, amazing. Their book, Abundance: The Future Is better Than You Think. If we just embrace some of this stuff, wow, it’s an incredible time to be alive, it’s an amazing time to be alive. So, we’ve got a lot to look forward to. Check out JasonHartman.com for other prior podcast episodes for some fantastic properties. I know we held a lot of properties for the buyers who attended Meet the Masters. By the way, a lot of you who attended purchased a lot of properties there over the weekend, so thank you for doing that. Enjoy your fantastic investments. I want to wish you happy investing and many of you told me it’s just been a pleasure reading the revaluations, but many of you came up to me and said and put in the valuations for the speakers that this was our best Meet the Masters event today. You’ve raised the bar for us and hopefully we raised the bar on what to expect on the next one. Hopefully our 17th Meet the Masters event, the next one, will be even better than this one.

So, go to JasonHartman.com. Check out some of the properties. We will have more released because our local market specialist are holding many properties for the event, but now the event is over and anything that wasn’t purchased will be released on the website. You can find them at JasonHartman.com. We’ve still got that little bug that we’re tying to fix, by the way, on the site. So, if you find a property you like there, please do not inquire by filling out the web form right there at the property, because we may not get it. We’ve had some problems with that little app that we’re trying to fix, but just go to the contact us page and contact us through there and one of our investment counselors will get a hold of you and help you purchase that property. With that, let’s get to our guest, Dr. Ben Carson. Here we go.

It’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Ben Carson to the show. He is a famed conservative neurosurgeon and author of the book, One Nation: What We Can All Do To Save America’s Future. Very timely title, Ben. Welcome, how are you?

Dr. Ben Carson:

I’m doing great, nice to be with you.

Jason:

Good. It’s good to have you. You’re coming to us from, where are you located today:

Ben:

Today I am in Ketchum, Idaho.

Jason:

Fantastic and are you campaigning?

Ben:

No, I’m actually I was actually here on some business and enjoying the beautiful summer time here.

Jason:

Good stuff, so are you considering a run for presidency?

Ben:

A lot of people think that I should be, but it’s not something that’s on my bucket list when I retired. I was actually thinking more in terms of learning how to play the organ and improving my golf game, but it seems like…

Jason:

Yeah, I don’t think Obama’s presidency has interfered with his golf game.

Ben:

Yeah, you’re right. I could probably play more, but I am certainly listening to all the voices. I was on a 29 city bus tour the week before last in 8 days, by the way, and the crowd was just so overwhelming every place that we went. There was so many people saying, oh you gotta do it, you gotta do it. What I’m going to do is just kind of wait and see what happens in November, because that’ll be a very good indication to me about the temperament of the nation. Are people sort of happy with big government being in every aspect of their lives or are they ready to move back to the more traditional America and that will help me decide.

Jason:

Yeah, well, big government never leads to good things. It always leads to oppression and poverty and everything else bad, but they keep trying this experiment over and over and it would seem, Ben, history would be our guide by now. We have so many examples of bad government

Ben:

You would think so, but this so called utopian society they’re always striving to achieve, it always ends up looking the same way with a small group of elites at the top living luxurious lives and control everything and a rapidly shrinking middle class in a vast expanded dependent class.

Jason:

No question about it. So, big government is utopian for those who run big government and the insiders and the cronies, but it’s terrible for everybody else. It really is. Well, since you have an obvious a great background in medicine, I thought maybe I’d ask you about the affordable care act as it’s so inappropriately named I think, but you know, what do you think about the medical issue? It’s always a huge part of our economy. I kind of hate keep talking about it on the show, but it’s this giant mammoth thing and it’s been the, according to Obama, the crowning achievement of his presidency. I beg to differ.

Ben:

Well, I think it is a crowning achievement for him in the sense that he wants to fundamentally change the nation and of course if you go and look at the writing of Alinsky, Lenin, and people of that nature and they talk about how it important it is when you’re trying to move to their quote, utopian society, to make the population dependent first on the government and the best way to do that is take control of the most important thing they have, which is their health care. It’s surprising to me that more people don’t read this literature and actually know what’s going on here. This healthcare act was not about health care, it was about control. We have much better and much easier way to provide good healthcare.

First of all you only had 15% of the people who didn’t have it, so why would you, you know, turn the whole system upside for that reason. That makes no sense of all, so that should have told people right there, but at any right there are some excellent alternatives that I talk about them in the book that you can use to help saving accounts, for example, with a variety of different ways to funding them and to providing them to virtually American, which puts them in charge of their own health care, them and their doctors. That brings the whole medical system into free market and that’s what control quality and that what’s control price and that would have been a much simpler way to do it. Put everybody on equal footing. What we’re going toward now is a two tiered system where those who have money can have a concierge type medicine and everybody else waits in line forever. This is not going to be useful in the long run.

Jason:

Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going to happen and the shortage is just always occur. It’s the most basic and simple rule of economics. If you disincentive people to go into the career and I already hear complaints from doctors saying they’re looking for other opportunities. They’re really thinking about their career. I mean, kids who are thinking about medical school are thinking about not doing it literally because of Obama care. For that one reason only.

Ben:

Well, private practices is getting to be a chain of appearance. No body can afford to do it anymore. I talked to so many of my colleagues who are just disgusted and they say, gosh, you’re so lucky you’ve retired, I’m just looking forward to the day where I can retire. I want medicine to be fun again and that’s why I’m working with a number of people in congress, with a group of people, to make sure there is a good alternative in place, because this system will collapse. There’s no question about that. You have the issue of them being them, “Well, we should just go through a single pair system. That’ll be the simple thing.” We want to make sure there’s an in place system that we can understand and that’s highly desirable.

Jason:

Yeah, no question about it. So, talk to us about some of the other areas of your book if you will. Just some of the hot buttons. You cover quite a bit in here. You know, you talk a lot about the future, a lot about what’s going to happen to America, but this disunity and…

Ben:

One of the reasons it’s entitled One Nation is to the emphasize the fact that our unity is our strength. Traditionally have been what made America great and exceptional and those who want to fundamentally change America know that it is necessary to first of all divide America and therefore we seem them driving a wedge into every little crack to create a war. A war on women, racial war, income wars, age wars, religious wars, whatever, there’s a war on it. It’s become very offensive. We are divided almost as you possibly be and still survive at this point in time. You take issues that shouldn’t even be partisan. For instance, the IRS scandal and we’ve got people divided on partisan law. I mean, this is something that affects everybody. It affects the very freedom that we have as an America, but you have people dividing us on different sides. It’s unbelievable and this will destroy America.

I want people to understand that it’s actually okay to disagree with somebody on something. In fact, you can learn a lot more from somebody that you disagree with than from somebody that agrees with you all the time. Have a conversation. Start talking, because you look to the great radical, Saul Alinsky, and his rules for radicals. One of the things he said was, never, ever have a conversation with your adversary, because that humanizes him and your job is to dehumanize them.

So, they don’t want you to have a conversation. It’s sort of like a marriage, you know, before people divorce, what happens? They stop talking. The next thing they know is the devil incarnate, you know, and this is what we’re doing to each other rather than having those very important conversation because I think most American’s will find we have very similar thoughts, aspirations, desires, but we’ve been manipulated and whipped up into a frenzy something like on a playground when you were a youngster and you had the trouble marker that’ll go around with his kids and say, “Hey, he’s talking about your mama.” and then he goes to the other one trying to stir up people and they sit back and relax and enjoy the fight. Well, that’s what’s going on in our country right now.

Jason:

Well, that’s the first rule of warfare, divide and conquer, isn’t it?

Ben:

Yeah, that’s what they’re doing and we the people have got to be smart enough to see what’s going on and top allowing it. The other thing that’s frightening to me is the fact that people have been beaten into submission and they’re afraid. They’re afraid the express themselves. Is somebody going to call them a name? Are they going to lose their job? Are they going to have an IRS audit? It’s not the free America that I knew growing up and that certainly we inherited from those who proceeded us who were brave. You think about people like Nathan Hill. A teenage rebel, a spy, when he was caught and ready to be executed by the British, he wasn’t whining and complaining and shaking in his boots. He said, “My own regret is that I had but one life to give to my nation.” Think about that kind of courage.

Jason:

You wouldn’t have that nowadays.

Ben:

Think about those guys who do that. Invading the beaches of Normandy, stepping over the bodies of their dead comrades, thousands being mowed down, but not turning back and fighting knowing that they’d probably be killed so that you and I could live in freedom. Now, that’s the kind of courage that has characterized America and we must have at least be brave enough to think about those who are coming behind us and, you know, I think in particular about, you know, I grew up in Detroit and it was once the most prosperous city in the nation and now it’s the biggest bankruptcy.

Jason:

You know what I like to say, Ben? I like to say that Detroit is the poster child for big government socialist disaster. I mean, it’s just the saddest story ever. I mean, Detroit was not only the most amazing cities of the country, it was a flagship city of the entire world. I mean, look what came from Detroit, it was incredible, but then prosperity, you know, the low empathy, big bureaucracy, unions, just drove the businesses out and corrupt politicians.

Ben:

You know, we’re together. To destroy an entire city and it’s a harbinger to what happened to our nation. The exact same thing if we continue down this pathway. I’m particular alarm, you know, having spent most of my life dealing with children, welfare children, recognizing what we are doing to their future with our reckless spending. 17.5 trillion moving rapidly toward 18 trillion dollars in terms of a national debt, a number most people can not comprehend, but if you try and pay it back at a billion dollars a day, it would take you almost 50 years. I mean, it’s just a ridiculous number.

The only reason we can sustain it, of course, is because we are the world reserve currency and, as you probably know, China, Russia, and some others are making noises about it right now. Saying that we do not deserve to be the world reserve currency, because of our reckless fiscal polices and they may have a point, but if we’re not the reserve currency, then it means we can’t print money anymore. If we can’t print money with the level of debt that we have, then Greece here we come. You know, occupy Wall Street would be a walk in a park compared to what you’d see going on and we’re just around the corner for that.

Jason:

I agree with you mathematically, but I think that the only thing that really keeps and probably will keep at least for the foreseeable future the US and the reserve position is the military we have. We are the bully of the block. I’m not saying it’s right, it’s not fair, but it is. It is what it is and we will defend the dollar with our battle ships and our incredible military.

Ben:

Although, our military is rapidly being disseminated. You know, you look at over 100 generals have been fired, have had to leave involuntarily. The budgetary cuts the moral in the military and it’s as low as it’s ever been. I’ve got a lot of inside information from the military. This is not a good situation. All of these things…it seems like everything is moving toward a place that is not good for our nation and it worries me, but here’s the good thing that I’ve noticed, as I’ve traveled around the country, red states, blue states, north, south, east, west; just huge enthusiastic crowds of people. Many of them elderly who said they had given out on America and were just waiting to die, now they think maybe there’s some hope.

I say we have to keep talking about the things that are positive. We have to stop going along to get along, because when you do that the progressives win by default. That’s what political correctness is all about. Shut up, just don’t even talk about it. Don’t mention it. In the meantime, we will completely change the fabric of the nation. That’s what’s happening to America right now. The other thing that I talk about in the book is the importance of knowledge of knowing history, of knowing current events.

I was looking at a news show not too long ago. They were interview people on the street, young people, and they wanted to know who sang the happy song, everybody knew the answers, then they said, what can you tell me about Benghazi, virtually no one knew. They thought, “That’s a singer isn’t it?” Benghazi. I mean, I was like, that’s how bad it is. Of course, the founders of our nation were very weary of that and they said, our system and our freedom is dependent on a well-informed and educated populous. They said if we ever become less than that, the nature of the country will change rapidly.

Why did they feel that way? Because then people would not have the wherewithal to interpret what people were telling them and a slick dishonest politician or a dishonest media could easily leave people to where ever they wanted to go.

Jason:

And that’s kind of where we all. It’s kind of amazing. So, what else do you think we can do to, I mean, what can we do to change the mindset? The problem we have is we’ve got 47% of the people as Romney famously said, who are getting something from the government and no amount of logic or reason will over come someone’s selfish desire to get something for free, it seems. It’s just bad situation.

Ben:

It’s a good point. I’ve always said since the time that 47% comment was made by Mitt Romney. I said what a golden opportunity for him to now say, but when I become president, my top priority is to provide a ladder to those people so they can climb out of the %47 and claim the American dream and we’re going to do everything we can to make this economy what it needs to be in order to provide the fruition of those dreams for them, because that really is the key.

If you look at what’s happening right now, you have the heavy foot of government regulations on the neck of businesses and industries. Dozens of new regulations coming out every single week and circling business industry and then you have every aspect of our lives, anybody who doesn’t cooperate, they just pull the noose on them and that’s how traditionally communist and socialist government controlled everything. They’re doing the same thing. Most of our people had no idea that that’s what’s going on.

You couple that with trentonian taxation. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world and then we sit there and we complain about the fact that companies are doing business overseas. Well, that indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of business and capitalism. People are not going into businesses to support the government, they go into business to make money. You have to understand that and you have to create an environment that conduces to the growth and innovation of business. Look at our neighbors up north, Canada. A few years ago they realized they should slash their corporate tax rate to less than half than ours and what happened? Things start moving up north. Why do we have to be the last ones to understand that?

Jason:

You know what amazes me about the left is that you talk to some of these leftists, especially the ivory town type that think too much and whenever they in their own lives go to purchase something, they do the simple thing of shopping around and comparing, yet they don’t think, for some reason, companies, executives, will do the same things. Of course, companies shop for the most favorable place to do business, right? I mean, what a logical idea, but for some reason they should be enslaved and forced to do business in places like the socialist republic of California, my home state, and you know, they shouldn’t be entitled to shop around and shop for a better venue like the way the liberal shops for the best deal on Birkenstock. I’m joking, of course, not completely.

Ben:

That’s the motives of the progressives movement act. Same thing applies to other people, but they don’t apply to us. Look at the IRS right now, oh, we don’t have to keep records or we can lose them or they can disappear, but you better not do that. It’s just absurd. It’s absolutely absurd what’s going on.

Jason:

It really is, it really is. It’s just crazy. Well, any messages of hope, big ideas, we’d love to hear them as we wrap up here.

Ben:

Well, my parting words would be. Think back to the pre-revolutionary days of this nation. The patriots were very unhappy about King George the 3rd and his tyrannical declaration and what they started doing is calling town meetings and meeting in their barns and meeting where ever. They even invited the loyalists and they talked about the America that they dreamed of and that they wanted and what were they willing to fight and what they want passed down to their children and by doing that on a regular basis they gained courage and that’s how a rag-tag militia defeated the most powerful empire on earth and we need to do that again today.

We just need to start getting together with the people, your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends, your extended family, and talking about the America that you want and that you want to leave behind to your children and what you’re willing to do for it. You need to talk to your uncle who hasn’t voted in 20 years and make sure he understands what the stakes are and if he isn’t into it, help them get an absentee ballot. If he’s partially blind, help him fill it out, but we have to get involved. Recognizing in the last presidential election, more people did not vote than voted for either candidate. We need to get those people active once again and start moving.

I think we can do this and when I say we I’m talking about people with common sense. When we take control, the government, we can’t just like say, well, this is what they did to us, so this is what we’re going to do to them. No. We have to put the constitution front and center. We can’t pick and choose the laws that we want to enforce. We can’t pick and choose the groups winners and losers. We have to remember that this is suppose to be an egalitarian nation.

When we do that and we take off all the silly regulations, we begin to develop our natural resources. We use the environment of protection agency to work with academia and with the business industry to find the safest ways to use our abundant natural resources, so that we can reduce energy prices, which affect the poor. They don’t affect the rich. Things like that clog this big gaunt. These are the things we need to address in this nation. Again, we can do that, we can rapidly return this to a nation is fear and just for everyone.

Jason:

Great points. Well, Dr. Ben Carson. Thank you so much for joining us today. Tell us where people can find you and buy your book as well.

Ben:

RealBenCarson.com and the book should be pretty much everywhere except in Very Little Bookstore.

Jason:

It’s banned there to the people who support freedom and free speech, right?

Ben:

It was number 1 on the New York Times best seller list until last week when Hilary’s book knocked it to number 2.

Jason:

Well, I’ll give you a comparison. Your book on Amazon has 4.5 stars and you have a lot of reviews. You have 211 reviews and Hilary’s book has only 2 stars with 845 reviews. So, I think you’re definitely winning in the literary world, for sure. So keep up the work. Thank you so much for joining us, Ben.

Ben:

Thank you, it’s been a pleasure talking to you, Jason.