University Place  Charlie Sykes A Nation of Moochers  November 10, 2012 UP802   cc >> Have we reached a tipping point where more Americans depend on the efforts of others than on their own? I think I heard about that in a recent campaign. Charlie Sykes argues that we're very closed to that point, if we haven't already crossed that line. And it's not just who you might think. It's corporate bailouts on Wall Street, enormous pensions, healthcare, other entitlements, questionable tax exemptions for businesses and individuals, alarming increases in personal default and dependency. The new moocher culture cuts across the lines of class, race, public and private sectors. Our speaker today, Charlie Sykes, is senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a talk show host on WTMJ radio in Milwaukee. He's written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the USA Today, and, by my count, this is his fifth book. And I enjoy Charlie's radio show on WTMJ. I listen to it whenever I have a chance. And one of the things I like best about that show is that a lot of your talk radio today comes from one point of view, and they shout it over and over again. 

Charlie Sykes' radio show is not that. It is conversation. It is talk. It is thoughtful debate, and I think you'll see here today why I find it so entertaining. Without further ado, Charlie Sykes. [APPLAUSE]  >> That's a positive beginning that you applauded rather than throwing things. [LAUGHTER] I did Tweet today. I said I'm heading out to Madison to talk about a book called "A Nation of Moochers," what kind of reception do you think I'm going to get? Actually, given the way this week has gone for me so far, this actually is the highlight of my week. If you can imagine that. Earlier this week, I think it was the AV Club which is, I think, affiliated with The Onion, had an article kind of making fun of me and my reaction to the election. 

And they had a great headline, and the headline read, "Charlie Sykes would like to remind you that America is doomed, but his latest book is still available on Amazon.com." [LAUGHTER] Which pretty much sums it up. So I want to talk a little bit about writing, and I want to talk a little bit about how this book came to be, and then I want to talk about some of the substance and leave plenty of time for questions, because I assume that a group of you that would come out today to an event like this probably have lots of questions and lots of answers. I guess, one of the things that I really enjoy about this is that, as you know, I talk a lot, but I don't usually get an opportunity to talk to people face to face. That's the thing about radio and television and the Internet. You can express yourself, but you don't necessarily get the human feedback. And I also don't get a chance to talk about writing books very often, because in what I do there's kind of that whole range of being on the radio and then coming home and somebody saying, well, what did you talk about? And I'll say, I forget. It's consumable. It's there. It's gone. The Internet is the perfect example of something that is the instant gratification. 

You write something, you press send, and it's there. I was sitting back here before and I sent out a Tweet, and there were 14 people who re-Tweeted it within 10 seconds. Now, that's great feedback. And then, of course, there are books where you work on them and you work on them and you work on them for months and months and months, and then you send them to the publisher and you wait and you wait and you wait and the next year they come out. So that's the ultimate in the delay of gratification. I guess if I was giving any advice to writers of books like this, it would be writing a book is a little bit like having a chronic disease. It just goes on and on and on, and you really, really, really want to, you should want to do this. You should have something you really want to say. You should really, really want to say it, and hopefully, you'll have an interesting way of saying what it is you want to say. And I think that's where this book came from because I sat around for a very long time thinking about it before I wrote anything. 

It really started off with one word. It started off with the word "moochers." And I wrote down, because I was writing down ideas for books that I could do, and just a small correction, this is my seventh book, and I wanted to write about, try to find a way to talk about what was happening that I saw in the country. And I try to write about big topics. The radio, you can talk about a lot of little stuff. One of my books was "A Nation of Victims," or "Dumbing Down Our Kids, the State of American Education." So I like to have something that's a little bit comprehensive, you might say. But I had the idea for moochers for a long time. And I started off with the word moochers and somebody actually asked me, where did you come up with that word? And I came up with it because I didn't know anyone who used that word. It's kind of like hunky-dory. 1936 called, it wants its language back. It was so old-fashioned. 

It was so anachronistic. It was so judgmental that I thought I could have written a book about the dependency culture or the entitlement culture or the handout culture, but it's kind of been there, been there, done that. But I thought, here's a word that captures all of kind of, just a different way of looking at something that we've been talking about. So, for example, in my preface, I talk about why the word moocher, and I had some push-back from the publisher on that, by the way, because they were concerned it was not a sophisticated enough word. And I said, well, yes, but it's a descriptive word. If you're at a cocktail party and some CEO is sitting around drinking his Chablis and bragging about some sweet deal that he just got from sucking up to his United States senator, some pork or some special privilege, and you say to him, so, in other words, you're a corporate moocher. You may ruin the cocktail party, but you will have clarified what's going on there. You really will. And, interestingly enough, and this is why I like coming out to events like this because often online people will say a nation of moochers, you're talking about food stamps and poor people and welfare. And the answer is yes, but that's not where the book came from. 

It was actually sitting back and watching this universalization of people who are going to the public trough. The Goldman Sachses of the world. The General Electrics of the world. The Citibanks of the world. The corporate bailouts which really made me sit up and ask, is something fundamental changing? By the way, this is the way the world works in a very bizarre way. I would say that one of the great villains of this book, and I make them the villain because I do believe that they're fundamentally evil, is Goldman Sachs, the company that I think enriched itself using its insider dealings, and, as a result, was able to transfer wealth from the middle class and future generations into its own pocket. So you can imagine my delight when I got a call last week from my son who said that he's got a legal internship next summer with the law firm that represents Goldman Sachs. [LAUGHTER] So, for all of you who think that I'm the right-wing talk show host, in our family, he's the corporate tool and I am the left-wing populist. [LAUGHTER] In my household. So, as I said, I'm sitting around with this, watching the incremental growth of the moocher culture, and it was really the bailouts and the way the bailouts were playing out and the fact that it was multiplying, that more people, and every once in a while I'll have a conversation on my radio show where people will say, well, anybody who's a moocher, anybody who wants a handout is a person of low moral character. 

And I say I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the situation. In fact, if the government is handing out money and you accept that money, that is not a sign of moral weakness. That is a completely rational decision. And the more of this sort of transfer payment that goes on, the more people who are going to do it. But any case, I didn't write the book until one night I was sitting in bed reading something completely unpolitical. And this is completely parenthetical for those of you that are writers because, as I said, when you write a book like this, you have to have something to say, you really, really want to have to say it, and you want to find an interesting way to say it. And I had the first two, but I wasn't sure about the third because, quite frankly, I will confess to this group, I get a little tired of other people's ranty conservative books. I like my ranty conservative books. [LAUGHTER] So the book that I was reading was, I was re-reading, one of my favorite books of all time, Walker Percy's "Lost in the Cosmos." How many of you are familiar with that book? I highly recommend it. It's a mordantly funny spoof on self-help books. 

And what I really liked about it was the way that Walker Percy was having fun with the subject, that he was coming up with little thought experiments. He was coming up with little stories that were very unexpected and very thought provoking, and it was at that moment I thought, okay, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do something different. Now, for people who've read about "A Nation of Victims," you probably don't know that from my point of view, one of the things that I enjoy doing most was doing these kinds of, and I'm not comparing, please don't misunderstand, I'm not comparing myself to Walker Percy, I'm just saying he kind of inspired me to do this. So, what I did was I did put together some little, for lack of a better term, and I'm sure somebody else could come up with a better term, little vignettes which were little mini chapters. And I just sort of wanted to share some of them with you to give you an example. For example, a sub-chapter called "Moocher's Dilemma," and a little bit later I actually have a little checklist to determine whether you, in fact, are a moocher, what my definition of moocher is, because people will go, what do you mean by moocher? Excellent question. Then how do I know whether I'm a moocher or not? But here's the Moocher's Dilemma. Consider the escalating temptations and moral dilemmas in the following scenarios: Number one, car keys are left in the ignition of a parked car and the motor is left running. Do you take advantage of the situation and drive off in the car? Why or why not? Number two, the clerk at the grocery store gives you too much money in change. 

Do you keep it? Do you point out the mistake? Why or why not? Number three, your bank statement includes a much bigger balance than you believe is warranted. You realize the bank has made a mistake and credited your account with too much money. Do you take the money, do you pocket the money, or do you call your bank? Why or why not? Number four, a government employee comes to your house with a check for disaster aid. You have done nothing to deserve the money, you have suffered no damage, but he explains that it is perfectly legal and you are entitled to the cash. If you object at all, he will point out to you that if you don't accept the check, it will be divided up among your neighbors who will therefore get larger shares of money. Do you accept the check or not?  Do you think most people would accept the check? And is your decision based on character, morality, or simple common sense? Or simply on the basis of what you expect your neighbor will do? So that is sort of the escalating moocher temptation. I also talked about what I think is at the heart of this. The tipping point, obviously, and by the way, I hope you caught that I have a question mark, have we hit the tipping point yet, is the sucker principle. There's the piggy bank principle and there's the sucker principle, and I think that this relates to that, which is that if the government's handing out money, are you going to take it or are you not going to take it? If the government is going to give you subsidies for flood insurance, are you going to take it for your beach front villa even though you might have been flooded out six or seven times? Payments to farmers for disaster that they didn't suffer. Tax credits to buy myself a new car. 

Debit cards and free stays on luxury liners. In many circumstances, as I said, that decision is not a moral decision, it's a rational decision. So, this is where we get to the sucker principle. Think about the experience of standing in line at Disney World. You've been to Disney World, right? Or, since you're in Madison, never mind. [LAUGHTER] I'm not going to go there. You stand in line because, number one, it's a rational way. You know you're going to get on the ride. You're going to get in sooner or later. It may take you a while, but everybody else is doing it. 

Now, if somebody jumps the line, and this would apply to standing in line for a bus or standing in line for theater tickets, whatever, if somebody jumps in line, what happens? Somebody jumps ahead? Everybody says, hey, dude, no, back of the line. You jumped the line. You're breaking the rules. There is that social norm that says you wait in line. Well, what happens if it's not just one, if it's not just two, if you have dozens of people who suddenly jump the line and you are the schmuck who's standing back still waiting in line and everybody else is pushing on? What are you going to do? Is it a rational thing to do, to wait in line? Does it make any sense? Or do you begin to say to yourself, I'm the sucker. If I don't get in line for this, I'm the sucker. That's the sucker principle with other people's money in the moocher culture. And this is where I get to the tipping point that we were talking about. When do independent self-sufficient men and women realize that they are society's suckers being made to work for the benefit of an ever-growing and increasingly insistent more grasping group of moochers? When do they decide to jump the line? When does the principal politician who ran for office against pork and waste look around at the rush for boodle and recognize that he and his constituents are being left out of one of the great cash grabs of history? When does he join the rush for the freebies? When does a businessman decide the competitive free market producing good products at a reasonable price is a fool's game when all of his competitors are investing more in clout than in innovation? When does he decide that the free market is all well and good in principle but that the realist has to play the game of political grease to get access to cash subsidies, tax credits, pork barrel mandates that compel the purchase of their product or their service? So, when does the lobbyist become more important than the engineer, the marketer or the designer? When do lawyers become more critical than the vice president for research? And, of course, it's probably occurred to you that perhaps we've already passed that point. That, in fact, a lot of people have figured out exactly that we are already there. 

So, I'm hoping that and what I'm making the point here is that one of the things that happens in a country is that, and there's a story in the book for going back to one of my thought experiments, where there's a millionaire farmer in Texas who has got 500 head of cattle, and one day, literally, he does get a letter from the federal government saying, just to let you know, about a month ago the space shuttle, I believe it was Columbia, exploded near your property. It actually exploded about 50 miles down range, and, as a result, everyone in your county is eligible for the disaster aid. And he said, well, we didn't have any disaster at all. The cows are fine. There was no damage. We didn't have anything. I am, after all, a multimillionaire. And the federal government said, here's a check for $300,000, or whatever the amount of money was. And, ultimately, he ended up taking it. So, again, if this becomes the norm in society, what happens? All right, now, to get to a slightly more controversial point here. 

What is the other tipping point in society? And there are a lot of different ways of quantifying this. There are a lot of different numbers. And perhaps my numbers are even out of date, or you could come up with a different set of numbers, but one thing seems to be pretty clear, that the number of people who are dependent on government is right now spiking. The number of people who are actually paying the bill is nearing an all-time low. How long is that sustainable? How long can you go when, basically, the country is a gigantic potluck dinner at which everybody is coming for lunch and dinner but only one or two people are bringing anything to the table? Number two, what happens when you get to the point where 50%, and by the way, we're past this, 50% of the country pays nothing in federal income tax but a majority of households, maybe 50%, 60%, perhaps 70% get more from the federal government than they pay in. What are the consequences, fiscally, for the country which, you may have heard, is running a very, very significant deficit in debt? What are the consequences for the politics of the country? What are the consequences for the character of the country? Especially, some of this, they are almost cliches, but they are cliches going back to Alexis de Tocqueville or maybe Benjamin Franklin. What happens when people begin to realize they can vote themselves other people's stuff? And this is not something that just happened this year or last year. Some of us, when we were younger, read Milton Friedman saying there's no such thing as a free lunch. I don't believe that most Americans believe that anymore. I think that a lot of Americans believe that if it's free to me, it is free. 

And they believe that if they want something, therefore they can redefine it as a need, and if they redefine it as a need, then it becomes a right, and, in their world, the right means it is an obligation of other people to pay for it. And and what point does everybody go, all right, listen, he's getting this, he's getting this, he's getting this, Goldman Sachs is getting bailed out, General Motors is getting bailed out, if there's something out there on the table, I'm going to be taking it as well. What does that do to the character of a nation? Now, there are conservatives who disagree with me, fundamentally, on one point. They will say that, look, this is a country where the culture runs so deep, where the stigma on being on the dole, where the emphasis on freedom and independence is so fundamental to the American character that these things are merely temporary. They are sort of froth on the surface that we go through tough times, we move through it, and then we return to being America. And I hope they're right. That's a strong, good argument. On the other hand, there is the alternative view which I struggle with. Which is that a determined government can change the culture of a country in one or two generations. And when the culture of the country change, then the values of the country change, and the character of individuals change. 

I still think that most Americans are hard-working. I still think that most Americans want to be independent rather than dependent. I really think that at some level most Americans really don't want to see the rise of moral hazard where irresponsible, reckless companies than can go and suck up to the federal government and be bailed out. I do think that there's a residual belief there. On the other hand, how many generations does that last? How many generations are going to feel that way? So, one of the reasons I wanted to bring mooching back, the word moocher back, was, quite frankly, because, and I make no apology for this, I think that one of the things we have seen in the last few years has been the reduction in this stigma of taking other people's stuff, spending other people's money, and the word moocher is delightfully judgmental. [LAUGHTER] If any of you were planning on saying I am offended by the word moocher, it's like, well, yeah. That was kind of the point. It was the point to say that this behavior is questionable. Now, I probably should have said this a little bit earlier, and I think I make it clear in the book, but I understand that I need to keep saying it. I don't have a problem with the safety net whatsoever. 

I do not have a problem with programs for the homeless, for the hungry, for children if, in fact, as a compassionate society, as a Christian society, I say I come from a Judeo-Christian because my father was Jewish, that you take care of people in need. If there are people who do not have shelter, you provide them with shelter. If there are people who are hungry, you make sure they do not starve. That's what we do as a country. That is a big difference, though. There's a big difference between that and creating a culture of chronic dependency, the habit and the expectation of other people's money. And this is a distinction that sometimes, I think, is lost, but it is absolutely crucial that we make it. It is not to say that we don't take care of people in need. It's at what point do you have a generation in cycles of that sort of dependency. So, without further ado, here is my preliminary attempt to give you the moocher checklist because having thrown this out, and I'm going to admit up front that there are areas that are certainly gray areas. 

There are certainly cases that I think the transfer payments are justified. The problem is that if we really are reaching the point where 70% of the households in this country are now or shortly to be receiving more money from the government than they pay in, then we have reached a tipping point, and at some point that is not going to be sustainable. So what do I mean? A moocher is, these are my definitions, someone who believes there's always a free lunch and that somebody else should pay for it. Someone who expects others to pay to clean up their messes. This would be the Goldman Sachs, General Motors, General Electric. Someone who lays claim to something to which they are not rightfully due. Someone who shifts the cost of their own irresponsibility onto others who have behaved responsibly who, as a matter of choice, takes from or relies on the efforts and resources of others. Someone who takes unfair advantage of others to enrich themselves or otherwise bail themselves out. Someone who was a recipient of the transfer of wealth created by others without just cause or lives off the productive efforts of others and appropriates the fruits of their enterprise without making a proportionate contribution. By the way, this would apply to all children everywhere. 

[LAUGHTER] We try to grow out of that. Someone who voluntarily seeks to be dependent on others. And because I know you wanted it, I provide you with a little checklist here. You can use, you can check off to see whether it covers you. Are you over 21 and living at your mom's house? Does the government send you more money than you pay in federal income taxes? Have taxpayers bought you breakfast, a car, or a house in the last few years? Please include tax credits for clunkers, electric cars, or new home purchases. Has the government paid you to not grow something? Have you received disaster aid without having suffered any losses from a disaster? Do you receive payments from pension funds that are disproportionate to your contributions? I do not think people who have paid into social security their whole life and receive those checks are moochers. I want to make that clear. Do you routinely get something for nothing? Do you work for Goldman Sachs, Citi Group, AIG? [LAUGHTER] Or the government? Have you walked away from your mortgage? Do you think the government has a stash of cash that you are entitled to draw from. Are you an able bodied childless adult who spends his or her day playing Guitar Hero, watching The View, or surfing the net while your spouse works to support you? Do you work for a lobbyist, a public affairs company, or other corporate group whose job it is to seek privileges, benefits, or pork from the government? Are you living off or depending on money that will have to be paid back by your children and grandchildren? And, by the way, that's pretty much all of us right now. And then, this is crucial, if you answered yes to any of them, chances are quite good that you are a citizen of moocher nation but not necessarily so. 

Obviously, there are people who work for the government who are not moochers. So, again, these are the overall themes of the book. And, I guess, the first half of the book would talk about the culture, and then the second half of the book I get into the bailout culture, what happened, I think, with the housing industry, the corporate culture, all of those sorts of things. I didn't share with you all of the little vignettes that are in the book. There's a little story about a farmer who meets with compassionate academics who describe or explain to him how it is unfair that he gets to keep the food that he grows, and things like that. And there are other stories as well. But I think those are the outlines of the book, and, frankly, I think this is something, and I want to say that I still have that question mark. I wrote something this week and I said, okay, have we, in 2012, are we right now, have we crossed that tipping point? And it's still a question mark in my mind. I think if I was pressed to an answer I would say no, not yet, but I don't think that we should be over-confident that we can continue to draw down on the reserves that we have. I brought along a chart that I was going to show you, and it turned out to be a really crappy chart. 

I think I even threw it away. But I think in your mind you can imagine if we had a chart up there of what the federal debt looks like and you saw it from 1940 to now, it would start here and it would rise so high. It's really graphic. The reason I set it down was when I looked at it, the chart was just through 2005, and, of course, as you know, it's gone up even higher. I don't think it could fit in the frame, and if, in fact, in our lifetime, by the time some of you graduate from college here, if that national deficit, sorry, the national debt, which of course is the sum of all of our deficits, if it in fact rises about $20 trillion, you really do have to ask yourself, what have we done? What have we done as a society to our children and our children's children? The campaign's over. So, we've had all the 60-second ads and everything, but there's still the math there. And I have to ask, as you have undoubtedly noticed, I am a member of the baby boom generation, and we are the children of the greatest generation. Remember what the greatest generation left to us? What are we about to leave to our children? I'm really serious about this, that we have done is as a generation, leaving aside each of these individual policies, we are now borrowing 40 cents of every single dollar that we spend. So, we, as a culture, as a generation, are engaged in the mother of all mooches on our children. This is the greatest intergenerational transfer of wealth in human history, and I don't see any prospect that it's going to stop unless, somehow, we come to our senses. 

So, we can debate among ourselves this group shouldn't get this or this group shouldn't get this, but, ultimately, what we're all working toward, I guess, is as we pass on, every one of our children is going to be saddled with potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. This will not be the country that we took for granted. We, in America, I think, have a sense of, whether you want to say that we're special or that we're different or that we're a land of opportunity, and I do believe that one thing that distinguishes the United States from virtually every other society is the incredible economic and social mobility that is possible. We may not be passing that along. We may not be passing that along to the next generation, except maybe my son who's going to be working for Goldman Sachs. [LAUGHTER] Thank you. So, I'll be glad to answer any questions. [APPLAUSE]