Cenk Uygur vs Ben Shapiro LIVE at Politicon 2017

so we were expecting a thousand people we have 3000 people in this room so thank you and the good news for you is what we decided to do because you're so fantastic is that we have a Comedy Hour that was supposed to be a little bit later on and instead of it being later we're gonna do it exactly when these guys are finished we're gonna do it in here we have an incredible lineup a comedy lineup that we're gonna do so stay in your seats when this is over we're going to go right into that now the other thing I wanted to tell you was the first year that we did this we had about a couple hundred people coming with a couple weeks left but then we got this guy Genk to debate and conquer so so all of a sudden we ended up getting about 3,000 people that first year then last year last year we got this guy Ben Shapiro so we ended up last year last year we ended up with about 8,000 people coming to Politico so we thought this year let's get these two guys together they're both smart they seem to have a bit of a following and I think this year we have about 10,000 people at Politico so thank you for making this a big success your moderator Ben and Shankar backstage they've got their gloves on they're ready to go your moderator Stephen all the car he's going to come out now he's the president of millennial Action project do you guys ready for this debate let's do it Stephen [Music] are you ready for debate night at politican 2017 all right well let's bring them out the people you've been waiting for first editor in chief of the daily wire and host of the ben shapiro show ben shapiro alright alright and founder and host of The Young Turks Chang cuter all right if you guys can be a little more excited that'd be great all right well we're here to debate the future of the political parties and let me just say quickly one thing about the format I'm going to pose questions to both of our speakers here well we'll have a response we can have a rear response we can go back and forth a few times when we've gone far enough then I will step in I might ask a follow-up question or I might switch the topic so are we ready to go guys all right well let's start with one of the topics in the news today in that's health care and on to start with Ben are you proud or disappointed in establishment GOP figures like John McCain Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins for their vote on health care so I'm wildly disappointed with the entire party the fact is that we were promised a full repeal of Obamacare they did not even attempt to pursue a full repeal of Obamacare and the fact of the matter is that there's a significant gap inside the Republican Party about whether this should even happen or not there are people who believe that the Obamacare regulations are an affirmative good there was an attempt to basically leave all the Obamacare regulations in place and just remove the funding mechanism which would have led to the exacerbation of the death spiral the truth about health care is this there are three qualities of health care that you can have you can have affordability you can have universality or you can have quality and you can have two of those things but not all three right you can have universality affordability or quality two of those two things you can have and one of the things that's happened with Obamacare is that you've gotten closer to universality but you haven't gotten any close closer to either affordability or quality and the Republican Party seems to be falling into the trap of basically just copying what the Democrats do except being worse at it what they actually need to do is relieve the regulatory burden that is driving up the cost of health care and they need to stop acting as though insurance companies jobs is actually just to reimburse people for their bad health if you join up with an insurance company and your health sucks to begin with you're going to pay more because it's an insurance company not charity that doesn't mean that we can't have now that doesn't mean that we can't have some form of backup for people who have pre-existing conditions I would hope that the social fabric would help fill that in this is why I'm a big believer in charity and churches and synagogues filling that gap but what we can't do is suggest as the Bernie Sanders left does that health care is an inalienable right and therefore you can put a gun to my wife's head she's a doctor and you can force her to provide care at any cost you want to pay you can't do that and hope to increase the supply of health care health insurance is not health care they're not the same thing and anybody who tells you differently is lying or trying to sell you something Schank your take on the health care vote great before I do that first of all welcome to the Thunderdome alright alright alright let's hear him fish all right wait till he does something I mean in all seriousness in all seriousness the reason that I kid around about that is that I really want to make sure that Ben's opinions are heard in my opinions are heard and that this is an exchange of ideas and believe it or not there are some things that we do agree on and what we won't be discussing those tonight so so on the issue of health care let's get going so the Democratic Party is incredibly proud that they defeated a bill that had 17 percent approval rating so low bar and I'm glad they held the Republicans have a comical position which is that why didn't the Democrats help us defeat Obamacare well that's kind of cuz that was their idea and why in the God's green earth would they help you defeat their own plan now is Obamacare enough not nearly and there are a number of issues that we had us progresses with it including lack of price controls you left it in the hands of private insurance and of course that being corporations which been kind of alluded to there they're gonna want to make money and so that is very very normal and so I don't think that that was the right way to approach it and it was originally a Heritage Foundation plan to begin with so I believe that the right approach and the one that Democrats should pursue next although they probably won't is Medicare for all so so real quick let me explain why Medicare pulls us 77% and actually accomplishes the three things that been talked about it's universal coverage it is affordable and actually gives you good insurance that's why it pulls at 77% and medicare for all now pulling at 60% federally funded health insurance for everybody pulling at 61% so I tell to my Democratic friends you might want to try something that's popular for a change so and finally like on the idea that hey listen everybody can't get health care well this is not like furniture which sometimes you will do to Ben you look you could have a good furniture bad furniture I've had it all hey that's optional if you don't have good health care you die and and so I view it as not something that capitalism should deal with and I and I believe in capitalism and I think they make great stickers but something that something that is about equality of opportunity and you cannot have equality of opportunity if you're dead so Medicare for all okay you know I saw a couple of a couple of notes in response to the medicare-for-all Schneck so this is Bernie Sanders Nick obviously the problem with Medicare for all is that when people say that it's affordable this isn't affordable to the person who has the Medicare it is not affordable to the country in fact it's so unaffordable to the country that the state of California was a nutjob leftist state just refused to even pass Medicare for all because it would have immediately doubled the debt as far as the idea that Medicare that medical care is is a right but it's not actually a good or a service this is a way to make things less plentiful if you declare things right but you don't actually incentivize the creation of those things you don't get more of them so the South African Constitution has right in there that health care is a right that housing is a right the fact is that you don't have good housing or health care in South Africa because just declaring things rights does not make them appear what makes more things appear as a market-based system that creates more doctors that creates more medical care that creates more incentive for people to join up so my wife is adopted I mean she has to go through a thousand years of medical training and we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make her a doctor the idea that you're gonna have the government come in and then dictate the sort of care that you should provide to each particular patient and then dictate how much it should be paid for that care is going to lead to a decrease in the number of people who are going into the medical industry which decreases the level of care overall this is why I say that it is better to treat things as Goods than his rights because declaring something a right just means that you have the right to steal it from me but declaring something a good means that you get a market process that leads to lower prices and better care over time and the big problem we've had before Obamacare is that it was already treated quasi as a right you've had it heavily regulated on the state level it is continually heavily regulated that if you a there's a completely unregulated market is absolutely nonsense the reason you have employer-based health insurance in the first place was as a response to wage and price controls placed in the aftermath of World War two and employers began giving health insurance as an actual good right they gave it as an actual incentive to their employees if you had an actual individual based health insurance market you bought it just like you bought your car insurance you would see more and better health care for everyone yep alright so bet I don't want to steal health insurance from you I want you to be healthy that's why I want Medicare for all just suddenly money in my white services so it you know Republicans frame taxes is stealing that's preposterous so if we don't have taxes if we don't have taxes well we can't do all the things that we want to do as a community now there are some things that we just talked about that we don't want to do as a committee we want to do as individuals in fact the things that we want to do as individuals are much greater that's why we're at mixed economy but largely capitalist and I agree with that and I run a small business myself getting larger every day so but there are some things that the government should do they should do the military cops roads bridges and yes education and health care that's because you know conservatives seem a little confused about how health care works Paul Ryan had a whole press conference about this been a little bit alluded to it there they're like oh my god it turns out the healthy subsidize the sick yeah that's insurance that's how it works it's like the people with that are not getting into accidents or subsidizing the accidents yes that's car insurance that's how insurance works and yes taxes work in that we all decide we're going to do X but we're not going to do Y and I think it is fair for society to say that yes we are going to do health care for everybody everybody we're not gonna leave 20 million people uninsured we're not gonna leave 30 million people uninsured that's not what we do in a civilized society and from time to time the you know in the attack against Medicare they sell it's an entitlement yeah we paid for it through payroll taxes our whole lives you've got damn right we're entitled to it cuz we paid for it we paid for it and so when you take out the middleman of the insurance companies that put their profits in there that put their marketing in there that put their lobbyists money in there that means more savings for Americans and so finally you know the idea that it can't be done is preposterous since every other Western developed country thus some version of single-payer it obviously can be done and it is done at lower rates and better coverage Clemmy [Applause] add some things it's question and you can respond it but if you want to but shank reference Paul Ryan when the Republicans took control of Congress Paul Ryan the Speaker of the House famously said we need to switch from being an opposition party to being a proposition party so what's your evaluation then of their efforts in that direction to unite the party and move legislation forward I mean we all have eyes they suck at it I mean and Paul Ryan is not exactly my go-to guy when it comes to political acumen and genius so I add more one respond to some of the contentions the chanc was making about medicare for all and single-payer health care a couple of things one when you say we pay for it that's not technically true the idea that everybody who's paying into Medicaid paid for it and now they get out what they paid in is obviously not true it is they redistributed program and to pretend otherwise it's just silly the people who are paying the payroll taxes are not the people who are taking out through Medicaid obviously can I just address that super quick so if we're talking about Medicare right not Medicaid right so in Medicare so you're both correct and incorrect so it's not like I put in $20 and I get $20 back that part is true but we all pay into Medicare together and then we all get it when we get when we were two questions really what is your ideal tax right because it's gonna cost a lot of money for a lot of this stuff and - what is your ideal level of medical care because the fact is that we can spend millions of dollars on people and end up in the end-of-life care we can spend millions of dollars on surgeries and preventative care I mean it's health care is an expensive business even under a single-payer system which is why generally you end up with rationing so what is your ideal level of healthcare that is provided to everyone and what sort of tax rate are you proposing to subsidize that yeah so those are very very fair questions so let's talk about taxes for a second so conservatives agree or say all the time that the golden era of America was the 1950s and 1960s well there's a lot of truth to that our economy was booming at the time when we became the number one economy in the world at that time the tax rate for the highest bracket fluctuated between seventy and ninety one percent so that is when we were at our best now I want to be clear I'm also businessman and boy that seems high it does okay and one of the reasons my family were Republicans when I was growing up was because before Reagan came in the highest marginal tax rate was 70% so now we are nowhere near that we have reduced taxes to bare-bones and we have shifted the taxes on to the middle class and away from the rich and corporations so there is a much better balance to be had and if you said to me well you're gonna have $800 in taxes that are new I say wow that hurts but you're going to save $1,000 in premiums deal that is a deal I will take every time because I can do math okay so that is the beginning of your answer to taxes and then you said how much care well so that is something that all the countries that do single-payer or a version of single-payer struggle with and they have learned a lot of lessons and if we stop saying America's number one we might actually just personal on this issue were number 37 and and if we looked at what Japan is doing so well keeping costs down to half of ours unless we might actually learn something from Japan Switzerland on the other countries and by the way when we see Medicare for all Medicare Advantage exists so you can actually add private insurance on top of that and I find that perfectly great I have no problems of that at all so that is the government making sure you don't die and and actually lowering race for you and then if you want more insurance no problem so all this sounds great except for the fact that Medicare Medicaid and Social Security eat up 66 percent of the federal budget every single year the idea that all of these socialized medicine countries have it so much better than we do particularly in terms of cancer care is a joke we are still number one in terms of five-year cancer survival right here in the United States and when you talk about top Tata top marginal tax rates in the 1950s there are a couple things that are worth noting one that was top individual marginal tax rates not necessarily the business tax right we now have some of the highest corporate tax rates altogether in the industrialized world and if you would prefer for us to destroy half of the world before we become the only country that didn't have its industrial capacity destroyed which is what happened in the 1940s leading suspect of country on planet Earth essentially for the next two decades I'm not with you there I'm not really in favor of having a giant world war that destroys all industrial capacity across the West so we're the only people who actually have the capacity to produce anything and just markets that we can provide you right so first of all it is fair to say that of course the 1950s and 60s were different we just come out of the war so but you have to consider all the different factors so one was that factor another factor that was the one I mentioned so so when Republicans are conservatives say well high taxes by definition will lead to slower growth what we know because of our experience in 1950s and 60s that isn't true now you can say there are other factors but you can't say that the highest marginal tax rate being 70 or even 90% slows down growth because they didn't and it wasn't in Japan and Switzerland it was right here and and so and and by the way as a guy who grew up Republican I was surprised by that - I was surprised that Finland system of non competition in schools work but it does so we have to be open to facts and understand so and on the issue of where we're good and not good in health care sure there are different areas where we excel but then honestly you're cherry-picking there at one particular area that we're good overall we're number 37 that is not a good result but you have a brain cancer we're dying from other things where it's empirical we're are we are not as healthy and finally and finally this idea that corporations are paying the highest tax rate is both again true and untrue the part that it's true is hey there's the rate of 35% the part that's not true is they don't actually pay that there is giant loopholes and and they've got two trillion dollars sitting offshore and they won't bring it in and the reality is that if you look at the taxes from the 1950s corporations used to pay about a third of our taxes about 33% of the taxes overall so they did their fair share and that is fair I don't want them paying all of it but I want them paying a reasonable amount now to share that corporations pay of taxes is down to 10 percent you see what they did there they did wealth redistribution they took your wealth and redistributed to them then I'll let you respond that point and I'll be done with this because we can do health care for eight hours here but two things one I'd like to know which tax deduction people say tax loopholes a tax loophole is just a tax deduction that's available to everyone and some people take advantage of it and some people don't I can't take advantage of certain corporate tax deductions because my business isn't in those businesses for example I'm sort of with you in the sense that I'm not in favor of tax deductions I'm in favor of a lower tax rate and get rid of a lot of the tax deductions because I think that it's ridiculous that we have people gaming the system that said I'd like to know which tax deductions you'd like to do away with and I'd like to know also when you say that corporations pay 10% of the taxes right and individuals pay the other 90% okay so that means the taxes are still getting paid to a higher rate than we ever have in our history in terms of the tax revenue to the government then the amount of tax revenue of the government right now is trillion-dollar every year and final point here you alighted this question by saying we can learn stuff from Japan the standard of care is the entire question when it comes to single-payer health care that is the entire thing if people felt like they were gonna get the same access to care in a single-payer health care system as they did in a in a system where they can pay there will be way then we would have no controversy here but the fact is that rationing is mandated as soon as you start having the government run the health care system and decide what level of care people get so I don't want anyone deciding what level of care that I can get I don't want anyone else does they don't care about me they don't know my child's name they don't know my name all they know is how much I cost I mean Ezekiel Emanuel is at least honest about this Ezekiel Emanuel comes out and says listen I want to die at 70 right I wanna die at 80 that's fine with me I'd rather die at that well that's good for him but if I don't want to die at 8 here I don't want my father to die today it's none of his damn business so so when you say tax revenue is at its highest point now you know that that's me it's misleading because everything economically is at its highest point meaning that we have a lot more people in the country than we did in 1950s and 60s so hence we are collecting more overall taxes but the reality is as a percentage it is clearly down it top bracket now is around 39 percent it used to be a 91 percent that's an arguable right and our economy is significantly larger than it was then and part of that is because of reductions in taxes over previous decades well we we we tried supply-side economics hey Kansas how's that working out for you so there was this myth that for you your business is doing great yeah Wow we just had eight years of Obama so so the tax rate is clearly lower for the richest people in the country it is clearly lower for corporations in effect it is and so to say that it said a record collection is misleading so in terms of the health care and how that relates to the government you oh by the way one more thing on taxes you said you named me a tax loophole so yes there there are plenty of those for example they hide their money offshore they do tricks like the double dutch and that irish sandwich or the reverse and and i would end that i would say hey you know what we've got a 35% rate here's the new rule you're gonna pay 35% okay and you're not allowed to hide your money i don't care if it's in the cayman islands we're gonna make that illegal mit romney we're gonna make it illegal okay and so then every once in a while they do a tax holiday that well that must be nice you remember when you got a tax holiday I don't remember getting a tax holiday no that's only for corporations who bribe politicians so they brought that rate down from 35 percent to 5 percent and they said they were gonna create more jobs color me surprised when it turns out they didn't they offshore taxes they took that 30% extra put it in their pocket gave it to their executives and created no new jobs because that's how it works if you just trust corporations to do the right thing corporations are not evil they just want to maximize profit that is what they're built for so please don't be naive and be like no but the corporation's will look out for our interests no they look out for their bottom line and it's finally just last quick things you Medicare Advantage you keep saying rationing health care but Medicare gives you the bare minimum and and people seem to be very very happy about it given how much well impose but you can do Medicare Advantage and get more I want you to be able to do if you're incredibly rich and you want every kind of treatment I don't want to deny that to you get Medicare Advantage the problem is when you pay a higher tax rate throughout the course of your life to pay for all of the Medicare that you are talking about you don't have enough money to pay for Medicare Advantage in many cases and as far as this idea that you know corporations have you they don't have any of your interests at heart you're a corporation TYT CEO it's a corporation you have 80 employees I assume that you're not just a greedy and that you actually would like to help your your employees from time to time and you just talked about how under Obama everything got better with your business well under Obama he didn't radically escalate taxes okay there was not a radical escalation of taxes under President Obama and finally when you seemed to be identifying a higher tax rate in the 1950s a higher level of growth so if that's the case why not just tax everybody at a hundred percent we can have massive growth from here to eternity because we're talking about taxes do you think we'll see a tax reform and the in the next few months here okay so let me try to address all that in your in your question as well so just real quick look guys I said it however many questions ago of course you have to find the right balance on all these issues including taxes so I never said there's no end to how much you could whine oh yeah so so the this leads to know wait a minute this leads to big government versus small government I'm so you're asking me what the ideal tax rate is and then you get a straw man there for a second and said it should be a hundred percent I never said that no in fact I said no you said you said the economy you said the economy grew faster when the top marginal tax rate was ninety one percent so I'm asking you why shouldn't be top tax rate or all tax rates be ninety one percent you seem to be identifying a higher rate of growth with higher taxation so I'm asking you on principle you talked about the glories of mixed economy so now tell me about the Lords of capital I've heard about the glories of high tax rates I've heard about the glories of government provided health care now tell me some of the glories of actual capitalism which is the basis for all the things you're talk tell me why it's good right so now look when when when use I use the example the ninety one percent and seventy percent to give you a sense of that I was surprised and you'd be surprised to find out that our economy was booming in those times that's not to say that that is the right tax rate for us today and so the exercise of finding the right tax rate is guys try to follow along okay it's called logic so it would be preposterous to set the tax rate at zero it would be preposterous set it at a hundred percent so what we have to do as a society is figure out where we can maximize the most amount of good for for the country because your government but not too much away from us so for example the reason why when taxes are higher it winds up being better for the economy is because if cert recirculates the money so if you give it to the rich this is hilarious if you're uneducated please at least don't don't make it obvious it's the most interesting conversation don't know the concept of recirculation of money then go look it up and so the way that it works is that when the middle class when the middle class has more money disposable income they spend it why because they're not living in the lap of luxury they're not saving it for their yacht so they need to buy food for their family they need education for their family so they spend it and it goes back into the economy if you just give it in supply-side economics to the rich and hope that it trickles down on us eventually decades later what they wind up doing it with it is something that is logical they save it but that means it does not recirculate in the economy and that is why when you have lower taxes ironically the economy does worse but of course it's a balancing act ok so now you're making a strong case for Keynesian economics which is totally fine obviously the the problem of Keynesian economics is that it doesn't even work in theory because again once you go to the logical extreme which is remove all of the money from the rich people who are saving all their money and give it to all the poor people to buy hamburgers that doesn't help the economy or spur the economy what Spurs the economy is a higher level what Spurs the economy is the creation of new products and services and that is only going to be done by people who have expendable capital to actually invest in the new products and services that we all enjoy this is what creates economic growth sitting it's also worth noting that this this myth that spending is inherently better for an economy than saving that's only true if you're talking about somebody's actually taking the cash and just shoving it into their mattress banks are in the business of lending when they take the money in they don't just stick it in Al Gore's fake lockbox they actually lend the money back out to people to actually create new businesses and new products you had an investor right when you start at TYT you're given four million dollars my buddy roemer to start TYT that's great that's the way business should work right but that money had then come from bunch of poor people buying hamburgers it came from a very very wealthy guy who gave you money to create a business a lot of people want to patronize if you want better products and better services you need more investment in the products and services the basic name trickle-down economics the basic name trickle-down economics is not something that any conservative even proposed it's a leftist revision of what economics actually is because you're not giving me the money it was my money in the first place created through voluntary transactions that I had with others I've not stolen money from either from anyone neither have you and the idea that money has to be forcibly taken from you and handed to somebody at the bottom end of the economic spectrum to somehow jog the economy that may jog McDonald's but is not going to jog all of the creation of the products and services that make all of our lives much better today than they weren't thirty years ago in terms of the stuff we have access to I think I'll let you respond to that briefly and then we'll switch topic yeah so I'll try to answer that as briefly as I can and I'll go on to your questions so when when you when you talk about hey the banks are they're not going to just keep the money they're gonna put it out and and lend it to people unless they decided to do their own investments which is what they did because we were appealed glass-steagall so it's not as simple as oh I have money so then I will now utilize it or I'll lend it out so that is way over simplistic speaking of over simplistic to say that oh well they'll go buy hamburgers with it come on you're going to show the middle class is struggling right now and we've turned this into a Walmart economy where people are getting $7.25 and that that if you're getting around $10 I think that's about 15,000 a year so don't like that is serious pain and difficulties so if you give those people money it's not like I just want to go get a hamburger no they desperately need that money and that yes they will spend it on in back into the economy so that's an economic fact and so and and then for the 88th time we have to find a balance where you have provided an incentive for people to save and invest and you have provided an incentive for people to be able to put money back into the economy to be able to live and it's not in taxes and not stealing from you so you're right I run a business so in order for people my employees to get to my company you know what they have to do they have to drive on roads okay so it's not stealing from me to build that road that helps my business they had to go to school the fact that they went to public schools allows them to work for me all these things are things that I benefit from I didn't build that company by myself every single person that works there helped me to build that company and that's what it means to work together so and so to answer Steve's question finally look you know what is this Congress going to do on on tax reform and Ben and I disagree on this too because we just talked about it a second ago and this is just political prognostication but I think that the Republicans will definitely pass tax reform and I and the reason I say that is because the Republican Party at this point is completely dependent on their donors and by the way don't get me wrong the Democratic Party is also largely dependent on their donors I think the Republicans are tiny bit more corrupt but so I think that I think I think that their donors are going to demand those tax cuts and if I am right and we'll all see this you know because it's something that's going to happen later not something that has happened they will do everything they will move mountains to make sure that those rich donors and corporations will get their tax cuts okay so this is this is an interesting case where I say to Shanks prognostication from his mouth to God's ears and he says about mine from my mouth to God's ears I don't think they're in the past because I think there's a high level incompetence inside the Republican caucus and it's pretty fractious but I do want to go back to a couple of points because gosh you can't some major thematic points you talked about roads and the fact that we need roads in order to get some work this is a point Elizabeth Warren made and obviously a point that President Obama made at the time I don't think anyone argues that we don't need roads to get to work the problem is that when you're talking about roads as a percentage of the budget we are talking about a tiny tiny tiny percentage of the federal budget and of the state budget and even of the local budget so the idea that you're justifying massive tax rates on corporations or pay for roads is just intellectually dishonest it's a tiny print the stuff that we agree on the government should spend on is a tiny percentage of spending rights all the other stuff that we disagree on as far as the idea that I'm somehow being you know dismissive toward people who are buying hamburgers I'm not I'm saying the people who are poor need to buy hamburgers to feed their children they don't have the money to invest in building an iPhone because when you're just trying to get by and you are living in a Walmart subsistence economy you're using that money to buy the products and services you need to get by that does not create new products and services that become cheaper over time from competition you need somebody to make those investments you saw you said this about glass-steagall for example you said the bank's they might make their own investments in what in what they're not investing in themselves I mean they have to take that money and then they have to use it to invest in something else places like Apple place it some that fail and some that succeed this idea that banks are somehow evils is just not the case unless you're talking about them working in Congress here you and I agree working incongruities with a Congress so that the legislature that is attempting to give them kickbacks both you and I agree on this so and finally as far as the idea that Republicans cast tax cuts because they're both holdings of their donors okay and Democrats passed tax increases because the unions give them hundreds of millions of dollars every year and I don't see Democrats complain about this so you got me there that you use your money to the Democrats so am i I mean does it upset you as much as you know bankers giving money to Republicans no no corporations give way more than the unions so it's best corporation look it up you can google it it's really easy so you I objected taking out Union money from politics hell no I don't object take it all out take the Union money out take the corporate gunny out take all the big money out they're supposed to represent us and not the donors no matter who the donors are so in terms of the question that you asked glass-steagall are they investing in things know I have a literal answer for you oftentimes what they do is financial derivatives in fact that's the majority of what they do and financial derivatives is simply gambling that's what crashed the 2008 economy and and what is so damaging about the removal glass Siegel is now they could do their financial derivative gambling with depositor money poison that nice they take your money and they gamble with it and if they lose well that's a sad day for you but if they win they keep the profits you know what that is that's privatizing the gains and socializing the losses so it's not it's not that the banks are evil of course they're not evil it's just that they're driven to make more money of course that is the whole point of maximizing profit so if we say hey banks you're allowed to go and buy politicians although the Supreme Court would say no they're just talking to them they just gave them billions of dollars they're just having a conversation right just because they gave them billions of dollars they don't do they want something in return of course you want something in return and that's our money so what they got it what they got was laws passed by politicians to remove glass-steagall and yes Clinton and Gingrich yes both parties are guilty on that but now the Democrats want to put it back in the Republican Stone and they took our deposit our money and they gambled with it and if you thought they if you gambled you get to keep all the profits and if you lost it didn't affect you at all you would probably gamble a lot of money too and you would take a lot of risk until you crash the economy and that's exactly what happened let me just add one point his question he'll respond to it too you've talked a lot about the corruption in politics and a core part of the Trump campaign was railing against the establishment which he thought was corrupted and a lot of the big donors were initially against him so which way is the Republican Party going to go on this is it trumpism and the grassroots movement or the establishment well I mean I when it comes to money in politics I think that that that breakdown doesn't really hold I mean the fact is that President Trump during the campaign talked to routinely about how engaged in putting money into politics so and this is a game that a lot of people are playing it's kind of a weird question but as far as the idea that all money should be out of politics here is the problem okay TYT I we both have corporations and we expand upon politics every single day and we motivate thousands of people right every day on both sides of the Iowa that is effectively an in-kind contribution now I you campaign with Bernie Sanders did you do it because you expect it that's fine did you expect did you do that because you supported Bernie Sanders or did you do that because you expected some gimme forty whitey in return I assume you did it because you supported Bernie Sanders right yes so okay so the point that I am making is to attribute to everyone else bad intent when it comes to political spending and politics but to yourself it's totally fine and when it comes to other media intent entities that give in-kind contributions on a regular basis through their coverage visit when the New York Times when the New York Times which is biased to the left spends an inordinate amount of time and money reporting on Mitt Romney's idiotic stories about how he's in high school and cutting a gay kid's hair in 1932 if you're saying to me that that is less impactful on the political sphere than a corporation which is a group giving money to a to a political candidate for purposes of supporting that candidate I fail to see how you can say for yourself that you are innocent in this but everyone else is guilty I don't believe that either everyone's guilty or everybody's innocent or if you can find the actual cases of guilt where there's a quid pro quo then we agree that's prosecutable right so fine when you talked about the 2008 economy talk about glass-steagall and how this led to the crash the real reason that the crash happened had far less to do with glass-steagall I opposed the bailouts by the way it had far less to do with glass-steagall than it had to do with the fact that the federal government was actively promulgating the notion that corporations should give subprime mortgages to people who are not qualified as people who could take out loans this meant that as you say corporations are not inherently conservative they're not inherently free-market they're inherently profit driven so if they felt that they could give a bunch of subprime mortgages and this would inflates the real estate prices and if things went wrong they just foreclosed on the nearest house and the market just keeps going up and up and up and they can just as you say turn these into derivatives and sell them on the open market by pretending that these are all good loans because they have government backing then of course you're going to get an inflated overheated real estate market but the question there is not the workings of the free market it's the pump it's the combination that you like in a mixed economy that I hate okay I hate mixed economies and since that I don't believe that capitalism and socialism should be mixed that corporatism is the solution okay what you're talking about is corporatism you're talking about glass-steagall which is which free the getting rid of glass-steagall if freed the corporations to invest in a free-market manner but also they gave a bailout to all of these corporations by essentially incentivizing them to give a bunch of bad loans knowing that if things went bad then all the losses would be socialized the problem there is not the free market the problem there is a government that is acting as a backstop for bad decisions in the free market by profit driven corporations okay all right I love that there was a lot to respond to there so let me try to take it one at a time so first of all I love the idea that the government made the banks do the subprime mortgages and ecology the government twist the bank's billions of dollars make another billion no baby make another billion no they did those if they thought they're gonna lose money off of it they would have a fiduciary responsibility not to do it I agree okay it was they were not forced to make billions of dollars they were not forced to then have us bail them out they did all that because there's legalized bribery in America right because the government was giving them much so so now let me address that you say well what's the difference between your speech and their speech mine is actually speech and theirs is money so there's a giant different you spend money on first off so they say no no Supreme Court says no money is speech now no money's property it's not speech and so if money was speech well then if you go to a hooker and you say oh no I office er I was just talking to her okay money is in the hot speech so for example to give you a sense of it to compare me saying I like Bernie Sanders in you saying whoever you like is the equivalent of this is obviously nonsensical I believe it's obvious so in a five-year recent five year period the top 200 corporate givers they both in donations and in lobbying spend 5.8 billion dollars okay so that is not the same thing as me saying hey I like what Bernie is saying about collar in Medicare and and when they did why do you think they did it was not because hey they genuinely liked Bernie or Trump or Hillary because in return for that five point eight billion dollars they got four point four trillion dollars in government subsidies so which leads which leads to I actually think the biggest point here the difference between big government and small government so a lot of times conservatives say oh you guys like big government that's not true so let me explain we if I ask you hey you got a plumbing job what would you like big pipes or small pipes I don't know what's the job we have it depends it's the same thing with the government okay what size government would you like I don't know what's the job we have so just say big government or skål government doesn't make any sense so for example do I want a big government that invades Iraq hell no I don't no way and and then you were vociferously for the Iraq war so in that sense you love the big government couldn't get enough of it and I could go on and on and on Republicans say no no we don't like big government but we'd like to be inside your uterus so just a minute it's no problem just say it say I love big government it's okay so you're talking about when you like tack when you're rich and you want tax cuts oh no I don't want big government I want small government but what is convene for you you'd like oil subsidies and you'd like Wars and you'd like to meddle in people's private lives then you love big government but I need to respond to something definitely me okay so first of all I'd like to point out that shanks big government small government dichotomy was proposed by you not by me I talk about the proper scope of the government's involved in particular areas the same way that you do and we may disagree on all of that my point is that overall if you're talking about the level of government spending it needs to go down and you believe that it really needs to go up okay so it's disingenuous it's not onward those no but all not on the war on drugs so many of those ways over it depends but overall you want federal budget increased overall I would like the federal budget budget decreased to pretend that this is not true is to lie okay and when you suggest that there is no difference between you know when we just have different visions of what the government should cover these things cost different things okay the war in Iraq was very expensive you know it's more expensive Social Security Medicare and Medicaid all of these are vastly more expensive than the warranty paid into them now as far as again going back to this idea going back to this idea that again I don't like to speak government dichotomy any more than you do in the sense that you say well it's big government for the government to get inside people's wounds and I say that is the government's job to preserve life liberty and property and one of those things is life to protect you to protect you from someone else taking it okay to protect you from someone else taking it now when it comes to the idea that all money in politics is bad again I ask you final a final question you know final points on we're going through ten points at a time here but final point here when you say money in politics is bad again I ask you buddy roemer gave you four million dollars to start TYT what did he expect in return should he not have given you money was the money not speech it was just money after all she's like a hooker I assume so are you the prostitute out of this world when you take money from Al Jazeera's that make you very sick a night that was an awesome conflation okay we were talking about money in politics and how money is not speech when you give it as a campaign donation and you turn it around to a business investment you know in a businesses men investment has nothing new his speech money is money they give us an investment so because they believe in our business great and you think the government is in the business of regulating business so the government is in the business of regulating business what would be the problem with the government telling Buddy Roemer he is not allowed to invest in your business no that is no no those are two different issues no problem no problem no it's is one thing is to say hey let's set reasonable limitations on what can happen around elections which is again what most developed Western countries do so and they have different versions of that rule there's ads you can run you can't run ads within a certain period of time your public financing versus private financing those are rules around an election that is a completely different issue than the government's saying randomly you can and he can't invest in businesses while you're conflating those two issues that have nothing new with one another why so let's just why me because because hey you know you believe in education so I believe in health care because it's a because it's a free country and I get to spend my money wherever I damn well please so as we're coming to the close here we're gonna do one little I got asked him I got asking are very close very well please okay so when the Koch brothers or Bloomberg or Soros puts in hundreds of millions of dollars into elections you think because they're good guys and they want and interested they damn well please buying all those politicians or you think no the politicians would never be affected by hundreds of millions of dollars in legalized bribes okay and you can't just spend your money anywhere you want of course there are rules you can't bribe people right there's many things you can't do with your money and one of those should be bribing politicians but we made it legal so I'm curious what your opinion on that is you think that they're just golly shucks I just mean well I think you're a lawyer so you know that bribery requires two parties to the bribe if I give money to a politician there must be something in return if there is no quid pro quo there is no bright leaders loving in return well you're using the politicians oh no no I think very often there is something in return but I want you to point me to the things that are in return not just say that all spending on politics ought to be forbidden except for the Young Turks no it's of course that what we say if if you if you want to get money out of politics and then you said The Young Turks cannot donate money to politicians I'd say of course that's the whole point of getting money out of politics okay so this idea that you well hey what come on it's so even if you're a Republican and you're a conservative you think there isn't pony capitalism you think that that four point four trillion dollars that went is subsidies because they got campaign donations you know it's because they got campaign donations okay okay final questions it'll be the last word I know staying here on this okay final question on this so Young Turks is super sick South's we have eighty million uniques it's it's wonderful do you think Bernie Sanders would care more if you gave him ten thousand dollars or if you dedicated your entire networks of kissing his ass for an election cycle I so two things about this first of all I think you and I will agree I think you and I will agree that what we did in praising some of Bernie's programs a lot of Bernie's programs but not all for example I disagree with him on guns and I thought Hillary's education program was slightly better than birdies and and by the way I agree with the Republicans on the export-import bank so it's not blind allegiance that is not what we do not remotely okay second of all I think you'll agree with me that the mainstream media kissing Hillary Clinton's ass for two straight years was a much bigger problem would you have the distinction that you're asking for that you're asking for and now I've answer I think four times is one is speech and by the way protected you you said life liberty and pursuit of happiness I think we all agree to that I got a bigger applause line I also agree and in arm in our Constitution a First Amendment is right to speech and freedom of the press so that is that rubric money is not in the First Amendment there is no right to spend money on politicians money is money speech is speech all right so let's do rapid-fire now as we come to the close here I think by the way there's wide agreement about the corruption in politics maybe different ways how to deal with it but this has been a very good conversation so I'll go first to Ben if you look at 2020 what will be a winning message and who will be a winning candidate on the Republican side in 2020 so I think that I think that the greatest ally that the Republicans have is the incompetence and stupidity of the Democratic Party the the 2016 in fact I have a feeling that Schenk actually might agree with me on this that 2016 election Donald Trump became President of the United States right Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate in the history of mankind and that had so you know the the Republican message I never thought was a particularly losing message I just think that what we have right now is such a polarized politics that it's gonna be very difficult for anybody to pass anything in this climate I also think that what we have almost a reactionary feel on both sides like what I like about this debates that were actually talking about ideas which is actually pretty rare in this in this in this sphere well what's become more common is that on the Left there's this there's this retreat to intersectionality as in identity politics this idea that if we can cobble together a group of people who are feeling victimized by American society you know we have black people and we have a SAN of people and we have women we have gays and lesbians and transgenders and they all feel really bad about how American politics is going and if we push that notion we can create a coalition there'll be a brand new coalition never before seen in American politics and that requires a woman to run or that requires a black woman to run or that requires a minority to run if they do that then what you're going to see from and I think an equally nasty way from the right is a response that says okay well if you're gonna do identity politics you will see some white identity politics from the right which i think is really negative I don't want to see either of those things but I would like to see is the Democrats campaign on the bigger on the on the stronger involvement of government in your life and higher taxes program that Schenk wants them to campaign on the Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren program and I would like to see the Republicans campaign on my program a smaller government libertarian program that says the government should get as much out of us our lives as much as humanly possible all right and forte for jank what will be a winning message and who'll be a winning candidate for Democrats in 2020 yep so I so weird if this ended up being the stage presidential debate okay so look Ben you said earlier that you didn't set up the big government small government paradigm but you just said you want them to run on a small government yes platform lessons where again the small government doesn't make any sense so let's let's break it down you asked me about well about particular issues so I'll give you one so you were in favor of the Iraq war that cost us at least one and a half trillion dollars then people turn around and say to Bernie Sanders well I mean college for your kids your kids are middle class that's unaffordable that's way too much money you can't do that that costs 75 billion dollars a year first of all cause for your kids you know what that's called that's called American dream and for and for one Iraq war for the cost of one Iraq war we could have gotten twenty years of free college for all those kids and the American dream so it isn't about big government or small government it's about what do we do with the money so that 1.5 trillion dollars could have gone to us could have gone on the middle class could have gone to a better economy because when you go to college you come out you start businesses you engage in in this market and you make things better and you employ people we could have used that for us instead of we wasted it in Iraq and by the way I believe been you you want to get tough on Iran you want to you know rip up the deal etc if you know the Iraq war was a waste of blood and treasure wait till you get a load of what happens in Iran so we're not gonna make that mistake again we're not gonna make that mistake again so what would I want to look this idea of the identity that Democrats won't identity politics that some of them do but let's not forget that Republicans do the same and worse who was the one who came up with the Southern Strategy that was the Republican Party and Southern Strategy was let's go get racist white voters in the south that's a fact so once again it's this wonderful capitalist invention called google google it so to to Republican chairman have said yes we did do that strategy and we apologize so that's a fact they're the ones who invented identity politics so when you you like identity politics when it serves your interests but we all of a sudden when we say hey can black people have the same rights as white people identity politics can gay people the same likes of straight people identity politics it's called equality look into it it's called America okay USA USA USA equality for all of us okay all right I wonder is very quickly very very I want a response my point is a point that chanc made last year in his debate with Dinesh repeatedly for about an hour I was the Southern Strategy with regard to the Republicans okay I'd like to point out the idea that the entire South solidly moved into the Republican category because of the Civil Rights Act is historically false and has been debunked multiple times by people ranging from Shawn trend to Real Clear Politics to professors at the University of Pennsylvania and there's a bunch of ways to de Munck it including the fact that the Congress did not switch Republican in the South until 1994 okay did it take thirty years for the racists to realize what was going on 21 senators from the South were Democrats how many of them became Republicans after the Civil Rights Act the answer one the other twenty stay Democrats in 1952 Eisenhower did not win a ton of the south Eisenhower did win however seven states in the South in 1956 after he sent federal troops down south the reason that the that the Republican Party started to win in the south it began in the 1950s not after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and it was largely due to the movement of industry down south it was new fringe members of the Republican Party younger members of the Republican Party who switched over to the Republican Party in the south not all Democrats who remained old Democrats and are still old Democrats today so I'm gonna jump in here okay I got it real quick you're very quick McCarter launched his 1980 campaign at the headquarters that town in Alabama that was the headquarters for the KKK she's pretend that it was only Republicans playing bad and race strategy it's just a lie okay laughter that was him responding to his own thing okay so real quick cuz you're right we had a whole hour long almost an hour long debate on the Southern Strategy you always got you guys always pick cherry-pick certain windows of time and this very narrow window a lot hold on if if Ben if you're so right why did two heads of the RNC come out and say yes we do the Southern Strategy and we apologize why did Pat Buchanan say to me on MSNBC yes we did the Southern Strategy yes we got whites to vote for us in the south and we had a good run okay it wasn't me saying it was Republican leaders and and Buchanan who did it at the Nixon campaign admitting that that was exactly the scenario some members of the Republican strategy counsel who were doing evil things that doesn't mean all the people who voted for the Republicans were voting for them because of those things and to impute that motive to tens of millions of people down south is to ignore not only history all right I'm gonna cut right in here so first of all I think we figured out who this crowd wants to run for president in 2020 Thank You prayer house thank you second of all this is exactly the type of debates we need to be having from between the left and the right all across the country and I wanna thank politican on a thank politican because what this is exactly what we need in America if we're not listening to each other then our democracy won't succeed and that's why I think this has been a very constructive debate I'm not going to appoint a winner but the real winner is the audience because I think you've hopefully learned something new so please join me in thanking our debater tonight Ben Shapiro and jenk huger and give a round to applaud for politican give a round applaud for you my name is Stephen o Coley Caro with the Millennial accent project thank you and have a good night thank you hello best test test test test test hello hey you guys we have a comedy show coming up right now actually so we're hoping that everybody could just keep it taking their seats I know we're not gonna debate each other but

Channel: The Young Turks

Views: 1,297,847

Keywords: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, TYT, The Young Turks, progressive, liberal, news, politics, Politicon, politi-con, ben shapiro, debate, debating, conservative

Id: SIAyudtNicY

Length: 62min 21sec (3741 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2017