Point of View April 14, 2025 – Hour 2 : Updates from the Weekend

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Kirby Anderson.

[00:00:43] We're actually part of this presidential message on Holy Week, in which it says,

[00:01:25] Theologically, you've got to agree with that. And then he goes on in saying that, So, if you had not seen this statement from coming out of the White House, I wanted you to be aware of it.

[00:01:54] And it has been mentioned on a few other talk shows, so I thought we would mention it here as well. Well, let's get into the economy. Obviously, this threat of tariffs, and then the pause, and so on again, off again, has really rattled the markets. And one of the people speaking to that issue is a man by the name of Ray Dalio. He is the founder of Bridgewater.

[00:02:20] He is, of course, well known in the economic world as a hedge fund billionaire. He's also written quite a bit, and I have some of his writings and books and other resources. But he was on NBC's Meet the Press the other day, and said, Right now, we're at a decision-making point, and very close to a recession. He's not the kind of person I think would say that lightly. He went on to say, I'm worried about something worse than a recession if this isn't handled well.

[00:02:49] And that is, he's concerned about a couple of issues. Number one, the trade disruptions. But also, he's also worried about something which, again, we talk about, but most people ignore, the mounting U.S. debt.

[00:03:03] You cannot keep running up $2 trillion deficits every year and get to the point where now we're almost at $37 trillion in national debt and not have to eventually turn around and change course.

[00:03:19] And yet, the reaction from a lot of people in the public sphere right now about doing anything to try to reduce the size and scope of government and the desire to not only want Elon Musk to be assassinated but also to destroy the industry, again, just illustrates a lot of what's going on right now.

[00:04:44] And that's a great issue as well. If you think we have economic problems, as we're going to talk about in just a minute, we have even bigger problems overseas there in China. And that is the case. Ray Dalio then said, of course, he believes that the very value of the dollar is at stake.

[00:05:00] He says that he was really concerned about what is called a breakdown in the bond market, along with a number of other issues which he says might create such a severe shock to the monetary system, at least rivaling what happened when President Richard Nixon in 1971 canceled the gold standard or even talking about maybe the global financial crisis of 2008.

[00:05:28] So what does he mean about the bond market? I mentioned this the other day. Stay with me for just a minute. Sometimes this seems a little bit arcane and difficult to understand, but it affects you and your family and the government itself. And that is we have right now $36 trillion, almost $37 trillion of bonds. In other words, when we go into debt, we have to then issue a bond.

[00:05:56] It's called a treasury, and much of that is in the hands of foreign governments. That's not good, but nevertheless, that is the case. As some people have described in this particular article that came out by Charles Gasparino, and by the way, I have one of his latest books on my shelf. Charles Gasparino put it this way. The bond market is the plumbing of the economy. It also helps set the rates on consumer and business loans.

[00:06:22] And if the United States can't sell its debt, that is if people won't buy our bonds, our treasuries, they can't pay for stuff like, oh, Social Security, the military, or even begin to at least keep the debt going. And so when bond prices fall and their interest rates spike, it could be spelling an economic disaster. Well, a week ago, Tuesday night, you had the bond market.

[00:06:48] The bond market there is actually one in which the 10-year bond shot up to 4.5%. The yield on the 30-year bond jumped to 5%. What was happening is this. Someone was unloading bonds very quickly. And some thought, well, it could be a few hedge funds that were unwinding some of their complex trades. Probably true. But also the concern was that it was probably the Japanese.

[00:07:19] Again, if you think we have problems economically, just look at Japan. And they were seeming to unload U.S. debt in huge quantities because they just cannot justify buying our debt. And then other people were pointing to China, which I just referred to a minute ago, which is, first of all, our long-term adversary economically and militarily. But it's been one that has been willing to buy our bonds.

[00:07:46] If you look at the bond market, and I look at it so you don't have to, you'll see that the two countries that own the most number of bonds and treasuries are Japan and China. When they start unloading those, who's going to buy them? And that, of course, is the big issue. This is why this is also rattling the markets in very significant ways. If no one will buy them, what do we do? Well, then we buy them. Well, how do we buy them? We are out of money.

[00:08:16] Well, then the Federal Reserve has to print more money. Remember the last time we printed more money? That was during the pandemic and lockdown. Did you notice how your dollars were worth a lot less? If we have to keep buying all of this debt, we're in a really bad way. So that's why people like Ray Dalio, who know a lot more about economics than any of us around the table, is really concerned. If you're looking for a prayer target, there it is.

[00:08:45] Maybe we'll even have it on our Pray for America target coming out in the future. Let's take a break, though. We have a lot more to cover. We'll do that right after this. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:29] Tax compliance has become more difficult because the federal government spends more than it receives. It needs to print more money to cover the nearly $2 trillion annual deficits they run up. That means the dollar is worth less each year. If you put the money you are trying to save merely into a bank account, you're losing more and more value each year. To keep up with the monetary inflation, we need to either become an investment expert or hire one.

[00:09:52] If we hire a financial planner, things usually get more complicated because our money is often invested in ways most of us don't completely understand. Then we usually need to hire a tax professional. During this time of year, I often say I'm at the mercy of bookkeepers and accountants. They are the experts in the Byzantine tax code that runs more than 6,800 pages and takes billions of hours to apply that knowledge and then fill out the mountains of IRS paperwork and tax returns.

[00:10:20] Americans spend about 8 billion hours trying to comply with the tax code at a total compliance cost of more than $550 billion. We do this because government spends too much and therefore we must print too many dollars. If you dread tomorrow, perhaps you would agree with me to cut the cost of government and simplify the tax code. I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view.

[00:10:46] For a free booklet on biblical reliability, go to viewpoints.info slash biblical reliability. Viewpoints.info slash biblical reliability. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Well, now it's time to talk about China and tariffs and trade and what that means to you and your family and your economic circumstances.

[00:11:13] And so if you go to our website, I give you three different articles. One by Tom Trattop, who actually works with Salem Radio Network, actually used to work with us a long time ago, and we've known him pretty well. One by Bob Davis, and he is very well known, a former senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, wrote the book a number of years ago called Superpower Showdown, which was really the history of Donald Trump's first trade war with China.

[00:11:42] And then a short piece by Katie Pavlich. So we'll try to cover three fairly quickly, but these are ones that you can then find on the website at pointofview.net and read them in your entirety. And first of all, Tom Trattop says that as President Trump launched or increased tariffs on different countries around the world seeking to level the economic playing field,

[00:12:06] of course, it also ratched up pressure on countries like China, which, as he said, have been ripping off this country for decades. And then talks about the number of people that were very critical, saying this was going to lead to chaos. We did have some of that. A recession, not yet. A depression or even a trade war with China. And he points out that on a news program on the Salem Radio Network, Tony Perkins, who had on the program many times,

[00:12:34] interviewed another individual, and that is Gordon Chang. Now, Gordon Chang's been both in studio and by phone. But Gordon Chang basically said that I think China's move from 84% to 125% tariffs on American goods, he says, was largely symbolic. That's because at the 84% rate plus all of the Chinese government informal policies against American retailers,

[00:13:02] U.S. goods were not getting into China anyway. So the point he's making is when people say, well, they raised it again, well, it's not going to make any difference because no American is going to be selling goods in China right now because of all this. But he also then adds, Gordon Chang says, China doesn't have much ammunition in this trade war because they're a trade surplus company and they're a much smaller economy.

[00:13:28] Put another way, Gordon Chang says, President Trump is holding all the high cards. And, of course, you've heard him say that as well. In case you say, well, again, who's Gordon Chang? Well, he's the senior distinguished fellow at the Gatestone Institute. He's been on the program many times. You see him as an individual that has done quite a bit to expose what's going on in China, including his latest book, which I talked about a few weeks ago, Plan Red.

[00:13:52] Also, if you get our latest Outlook magazine, you will see we have coverage of some of the material he has in that book. So, anyway, Gordon Chang goes on to say the only thing China can do at this point is try to intimidate President Trump to force him to back down because he's holding all the cards. Americans are holding all the cards. He says the Chinese strategies use Wall Street, Main Street, the agricultural lobby, others to try to pressure Donald Trump to give in.

[00:14:22] He says I don't think our president is going to surrender, though, because he knows the U.S. market can't be replaced. So they're hurting, and they certainly need the American market. He also goes on to say that President Trump is going to win this tariff war with China, but he cautions that things will be close and contentious until it is. And so he talks about some of the other ways in which this has been unfolded. But near the end, I thought it was Tom mentions the fact that, once again,

[00:14:51] the Chinese might be wise to follow the lead of HBO Real Time star Bill Maher. We talked about him the last hour in which he had a dinner with Donald Trump at the White House. During their time, Bill Maher said that he found Trump to be gracious, funny, and self-defercating, unlike his public persona. He says I challenged him at times. He didn't get mad or call me a left-wing lunatic.

[00:15:15] He took it all in, and he talked with his audience about how maybe he was being criticized too much for being told that it was wrong to break bread with Donald Trump, and if nothing else, actually found him to be someone that he could interact with. The Chinese could learn a lesson from that, which brings me to perhaps the best piece that I have here by Bob Davis. He, again, is an individual that has written Superpower Showdown,

[00:15:44] which was kind of the history of the first trade war with Donald Trump. His latest book is Broken Engagement. But he seems to illustrate the fact that the argument always has been that Chinese leaders remind the youth they should learn to endure hardships. As a matter of fact, their phrase, roughly translated from the Chinese, is eat bitterness.

[00:16:06] But that's not exactly the case any longer because you have a growing middle class there in China. As a matter of fact, for the idea that, well, you're poor and you just have to continue to endure that, too many of them now are doing rather well. It turns out that more than half of the people in China are now overweight. As he says, that's hardly a sign of asceticism.

[00:16:33] These are individuals now that are not necessarily willing to endure this hardship for too long, which is one of the reasons why I think the Chinese Communist Party is running scared and trying to figure out if there's some way they can intimidate Donald Trump because they cannot endure a trade war for very long. And the old argument used to be that, well, they're a dictatorship. Xi Jinping is not running for re-election,

[00:17:00] so he can make decisions at the snap of his fingers. Well, Bob Davis says that's not really true either. Beijing, that is the leadership there in China, has a large and labyrinthine bureaucracy, which is also a very difficult thing for a dictator like he has had in the past. And if anything, when it comes to decision-making in the trade war, the U.S. is much closer to a one-man rule, he says, than China.

[00:17:30] One reason Donald Trump may love tariffs is he can apply them, raise them, lower them, and pause them on whim, and Congress hasn't quite willing yet to step in and stop him from doing that. So, again, he says China can try to match the U.S. tariff hikes, as they did on Friday, ramping them up to 125 percent, while calling them abnormally high numbers, a joke in the history of world economy. But he says there's really not much they can do.

[00:17:58] Yes, they can try to pressure U.S. companies, and you've seen some of that, putting limits on Hollywood films, blacklisting some U.S. exporters. Others, they can try to say, well, we do hold these rare earths that you need for your electronics. But it turns out U.S. companies generally don't buy the minerals directly from China anyway. They usually are packaged in components that they get elsewhere. And there are some other financial weapons,

[00:18:24] but the bottom line is, his bottom line is simple this. All this to say that China is stuck and at the mercy of the U.S. And so this, of course, could put us in a difficult situation. But nevertheless, what we find out right now is that maybe the best solution for China, and as far as for the United States, would be to come up with that win-win scenario that Ray Dalio talked about just a minute ago.

[00:18:54] Finally, I have posted a piece by Katie Pavlich. After the break, we'll get into it in a little more detail, because she reminds us of how China has been cheating for many years with all sorts of manipulation of currency, how they have been able to steal intellectual property, how they've been able to use the money that they have been able to make from us to buy land, agricultural land, and then even goes into the Belt and Road Initiative.

[00:19:24] So I'll get into that in just a minute. But let me, just as we go to a break, mention a couple of things. First of all, my commentary today is entitled Tax Compliance. And if you wanted to make a case for why we need a simpler tax code, maybe a smaller government, this is it. Because, my goodness, it is just so complicated anymore to fill out your taxes. Yes, a 1040EZ might be what many of you use,

[00:19:52] but if you're getting involved at all in trying to get the greatest amount of bang for your financial buck, you recognize that you probably want to do some investments. But then if you hire a financial planner, they oftentimes have us invested in ways that we may not even understand, which then means to not only have a financial planner, but a tax professional. And I don't know about you, but during this time of year, I feel like I'm at the mercy of bookkeepers and accountants.

[00:20:22] And if you feel that way, maybe that's a good argument for a simpler tax code, maybe even a smaller government. But as we go to the break, let me mention again that we have a take action item. You can go there, and this gives you an opportunity to express to your member of Congress whether or not you would agree with this particular piece of legislation called Dismantle DEI Act. We give you an understanding of what that entails.

[00:20:51] We give you a sample letter, which you can modify any way you want. Fill out your name, address, information there as well. You can even keep the button that says Remember Me, so you don't have to do that in the future. Then there's a way in which you can send it by email. You can print it and then mail it if you'd like. And then, of course, if you want to look at it one last time, you can hit the preview button. So again, this is something which we have implemented maybe to make it even easier for you to contact your member of Congress

[00:21:20] about this very important issue of DEI. Let's take a break. We have a lot more to cover. We'll do that right after this. The Bible tells us not to worry. And yet, there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't stop at telling us not to worry. God gives us a next step. He says we need to pray.

[00:21:48] But sometimes, even knowing what to pray can be difficult. And that is why Point of View has relaunched our Pray for America movement, a series of weekly emails to guide you in prayer for our nation. Each week, you'll receive a brief update about a current issue affecting Americans, along with a written prayer that you can easily share with others. We'll also include a short free resource for you in each email

[00:22:18] so you can learn more about the issue at hand. Will you commit to pray for America? Go to pointofview.net. Click on the Pray for America banner at the top of the page to subscribe. Again, that's pointofview.net. Click on the Pray for America banner. Let's pray together for God to make a difference in America.

[00:22:45] Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson.

[00:23:13] Back once again, final half hour. And if you would like to join the conversation, 1-800-351-1212. Let me just mention that tomorrow we're going to have Tom Hobson on with us. He is an individual that for many years has been teaching about how to interpret the Bible, but in particular we're going to look at key words. Just as today we spent some time talking with Professor Doug Grothuis about how to defend the biblical narrative and how to be involved in apologetics,

[00:23:42] tomorrow we're going to talk about his book Fun with Biblical Words. And once you understand some of these Greek and Hebrew words, it really may even change your understanding about how to interpret the Bible. And so I think you're going to benefit from some of his work. We call that Biblical Exegesis, which is just a big name for biblical interpretation. I think you'll enjoy some of the conversation that he has had in the past on radio, on his own radio program, and we'll be doing that. Because, again, it's Holy Week,

[00:24:10] and any time we can help you be more effective in defending the Christian faith, any way we can help you to be more effective in terms of interpreting God's word and applying it to your life, that's what we're all about. Let me just mention one more thing about China, and then we want to move on to some other issues. A very good piece, which is by Beckett Adams, about how the media will not own up to some of the bias that they've had, especially in the lack of reporting about the age,

[00:24:40] and in particular the mental decline of the previous president, Joe Biden. And we'll get into that. And then a piece on professors as we begin to think about what we are sending our kids to. It turns out that professors have drifted away from the classroom. By the way, that was true in my generation. It's become even more true in the future. But Katie Pavlich reminds us that in the latest iteration of The Art of the Deal, President Donald Trump is finally giving what she says China its due

[00:25:08] after more than two decades of lying, stealing, and wildly nefarious trade practices. That's quite a bit. But even one of the people that served under Bill Clinton, Jamie Metzl, said, I served in the Clinton White House. The Clinton administration made a strategic error by letting China into the World Trade Organization without sufficient conditionality. That is something when Marlon Maddox was a host, Penna Dexter was a co-host,

[00:25:37] and I was occasionally a guest host, we were talking about back then that when China was allowed to be part of the World Trade Organization, in some respects, they were given essentially special rules, treatment, tolerance. They were allowed to scam individuals. They were able to operate inside the United States and around the world without much scrutiny.

[00:26:02] They were able to buy up American farmland, oftentimes next to sensitive military sites. And in some respects, none of that would be allowed by American companies in China. Then, if that's not bad enough, we've talked about this before, but it's worth repeating because Katie Pavlich documents it as well, this laundry list of conditions. The government steals intellectual property, replicates it, and then uses it to put the U.S. out of business.

[00:26:30] She then has a quote from Tech Diplomacy. Tech Diplomacy says, quote, Chinese policy is to extract technologies from Western companies, use subsidies and non-tariff barriers to competition to build national champions, and then create a protected domestic market for those champions to give them an advantage as they compete globally. In another area, it goes on to say,

[00:26:59] after acquiring intellectual property, Chinese government subsidies and regulations help Chinese companies secure market shares in the global markets at the expense of the U.S. A congressional estimate of the United States placed the cost of Chinese intellectual property theft, are you ready for this? $225 billion, maybe as high as $600 billion yearly. And according to another survey coming from CNBC,

[00:27:26] one in five corporations says China has stolen intellectual property within the previous year. One in three said that it has happened sometime during the previous century. So we're talking about a very corrupt enterprise known as China. I'm not against the Chinese people. Don't extend that too far. But the Communist Chinese Party has used this against us. They've used the freedom that we've given to them against us in very significant ways.

[00:27:55] To understand that, then also let's look at what is happening, say, in Africa through what is called the Belt and Road Initiative. She talks about this one individual called Deepak Patel who remembers the grandeur back in 2003 visiting the Beijing Great Hall of the People and the guards and all of that, and the argument that at the time that they wanted to help his native Zambia.

[00:28:23] They were even singing one of the African countries' songs in one of the dialects. And so the idea was that they were quite willing to accept China's help in building projects like a hydroelectric dam, a 50,000-seat soccer stadium, then began to take out loans from Chinese banks for airports and hospitals and housing projects and roads that were connecting them.

[00:28:53] All looks good. But then eventually Chinese credit had grown to about a third of Zambia's external debt, which then surged sevenfold over the past decade, forcing the government to ask creditors to reschedule the loans. And so that's when things began to fall apart, as you might imagine. Not only were these so-called loans an unforgivable trap, she says, the infrastructure was built with Chinese labor, not locals,

[00:29:23] and it was falling apart just like the cheap Chinese goods sold in Walmart. So now the second term of Donald Trump is underway, and Donald Trump is saying enough. He's slapping reciprocal tariffs on China. As he negotiates with about 75 countries that are willing to do so, new trade policies, China's lack of credibility will push those countries towards the U.S.,

[00:29:49] further isolating the Communist Party of China. I think this might have been one of their goals in the first place. Then Trump himself announced this. Donald Trump said, based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets, I'm hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125 percent, effective immediately. Of some point, hopefully in the future,

[00:30:16] China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S. and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Of course, same time, he authorized a 90-day pause on some of these others. And so, again, as Katie Pavlich says, China finally gets its due. Well, those are three articles you might want to read about China. I post them because, again, they look at things from a slightly different point of view, but I think it's important to do so.

[00:30:45] And let me just, before we take a break, mention my other article. This comes from Beckett Adams. I quote from him every once in a while. And he starts out by saying, look, if you're waiting for an apology from the press for its effort to conceal Joe Biden's decrepitude, he calls it, from the public, don't hold your breath. And then goes on to actually react to something that happened recently.

[00:31:10] The co-founder of Axios, which is kind of a leftist center Internet site, last week blamed groupthink and herd mentality for the industry-wide campaign to downplay the physical and mental decline of Joe Biden. And he says that, if nothing else, that even if you accept this argument, that it really was just mere herd mentality, he says, well, what did the herd want?

[00:31:39] Well, what the herd wanted was favor of and access to the Democratic White House, which, as he says, is hardly a comforting excuse. And so the argument that you get from whether it's Mike Allen of Axios or Chris Silliza of CNN or a variety of others is, well, we just didn't push hard enough. And so as a result, we were told, as he reminds us of the time,

[00:32:06] that it was a conspiracy to suggest that Biden was struggling to keep up with the rigors of the job, even though we could see that plainly. The New York Times told it was a conspiracy to notice Biden's tendency to stumble verbally and physically in those particular areas. And if anything, they said that the documented evidence of Joe Biden's deterioration was deceptive and misleading.

[00:32:35] So let's not forget how even as you brought up the subject, oftentimes that was sufficient for you to get labeled with you're a nut, you're a conspiratorist or whatever it might be. And he goes on to point out then that even as late as August of 2023, in a moment lacking any self-awareness, the Association press was actually stumped by the fact that most voters believe that Biden was too old for the job.

[00:33:04] So the AP press reported Americans actually agree on something in this time of raw discord. Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president in his second term. Only a few years his junior, Donald Trump, raises strikingly less concerns about his age. And he points out that if nothing else, there should be a forthright industry rise and wide reckoning, but probably is not going to happen.

[00:33:29] And if you don't trust the media, it's because trust must be rebuilt. And that comes with an admission of guilt. And we've yet to hear that from the lips of those people in the media. Let's take a break. Got more to cover. We'll do that right after this.

[00:33:55] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, let's take some phone calls. 1-800-351-1212. Let's go to Georgia, first of all. Vicki, thank you for joining us today here on Point of View. Thank you. I always appreciate your program and your topics. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Let's see.

[00:34:19] Just the issue of China, you know, we have this tariffs controversy. But also for myself, I feel concerned for the Panama Canal. Yes. I was looking at some of the stuff in China owns a certain percentage of that canal. And I think that that could be dangerous.

[00:34:47] And I do not foresee that they would relinquish that ownership. It does seem like that's going to happen. And, again, I want to give full credit on that particular case to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who has really assured us that that is in the process because China owning or having control, they don't really own it, but having control of the Panama Canal is not a good thing. So that one, I think, is in process. And that's good news. Go ahead. Okay.

[00:35:18] Let's see. The other issue was, oh, the bonds that China, if I'm correct, I think the number is $270 billion in bonds that we would have to pay them. So, you know, while we're busy talking about tariffs and all these other things, I think that there are, you know, several concerns, not just with what's the tariffs.

[00:35:47] So, anyway, I just wanted to mention that. Well, you did very well because, again, most people don't look at the bond market unless they're financial individuals. But a couple weeks ago, for those of you that listen to the program on some regularity, I did talk about the fact that we have almost $9 trillion. That's just a number that's just beyond even imagination. They're all coming due. Now, there's a couple reasons for that. First of all, Janet Yellen. You remember her? She was the Secretary of Treasury.

[00:36:15] She didn't have long-term bonds, so all these short-terms came due at once. And, of course, the interest rate has gone up and all sorts of other issues. So we'll probably talk about the bond market in the future. I know sometimes your eyes tend to glaze over when we talk about a bond auction or treasuries or all that. But it does affect you. And, most importantly, it's going to affect your children and your grandchildren.

[00:36:41] And so that's why I want to talk about some things that most people ignore, including the fact that we have almost $37 trillion of a national debt. Tell me how many times you've heard too many members of Congress talk about that. That is something that you're now starting to hear more, not only from the Trump administration but from members of Congress. It's almost like, okay, we do have to finally admit that that is the case.

[00:37:07] And we need to really pound that in the heads of these individuals that are convinced that Elon Musk is doing a bad thing by trying to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. I don't know that he'll be able to get enough of it out to even come close to balancing the budget, but every little bit helps, and there's a whole lot more that needs to take place. But just before we run out of time, I did want to post this because you, if you're starting to think right now

[00:37:36] about where you might want to have your children or grandchildren go to college, you might want to read this piece by Frederick Hess, First, the good news. He says, After decades of campus decay propelled by politicization, bureaucratization, bureaucratization, I don't know that you even want to make that word up, and bloat, they're finally cause for cautious optimism.

[00:38:05] Legislators are dismantling DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. We just talked about that a minute ago. That's our action item for today. Governors are appointing tough-minded trustees. The Trump administration has hit the ground running on anti-Semitism probes and free inquiry. And so part of the good news is, is that there are some winds of change that are blowing in the right direction.

[00:38:31] But let's just face that the American college system, American colleges and universities, they kind of lost their way. And Frederick Hess says, This problem isn't new. He says, I recall walking across campus during the summer as a doctoral student at Harvard three decades ago. I was making small talk with a senior professor when he looked around the sparsely populated grounds and said, This place is wonderful, especially when the students are gone.

[00:39:01] And he says, You know, this hasn't changed much. In some respects, it's gotten worse. And the problem is that these incentives and institutions have taken a bad problem and made them worse. He says, Even savvy trustees and public officials don't always realize just how peripheral teaching and learning has become to the life of the university. And he says, The consequences are visible in the daily life of a four-year college. For example,

[00:39:30] Today's students work a lot less than they used to. Don't take my word for it. Two economists, Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, reported that in the 1960s, the average full-time student at a four-year college studied 24 hours a week. In 2010, the figure was half that. By 2022, 70% of four-year students said they were devoting fewer than 10 hours a week to studying for class.

[00:40:00] Full-time students are much less likely to work for pay than they were than their peers in the 1990s. So if they're not working like their peers in the past were, and they're studying only 10 hours a week compared to what used to be 24 hours a week, what in the world are they doing? Well, you know what that is. They're spending more time on their devices. And so this has become kind of a chronic problem. I'll skip a whole page of material because he then says,

[00:40:29] Well, what can we do about it? He's got a couple of answers. The first is to not pick on the faculty or gripe about students, but recognize that we have incentives and expectations and institutional norms that have gone off the rails. We need to begin to emphasize that teaching is important. I think you'd be appalled, first of all, at the amount that if you're a parent or a grandparent, you're paying so your child or grandchild goes to the college,

[00:40:55] how much you're paying and how little is actually being taught by full-time professors. That was true in the past. It's really true now. He says it's time to reboot the campus culture of teaching and learning, raise expectations for student work. In accord with the Higher Education Act, institutions that accept federal grants or aid already pledge that each credit hour of learning approximates not less than one hour of classroom

[00:41:21] or direct faculty instruction, as well as a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student work each week. And so it does seem to me that there are some ways, certainly through our strings that are attached, to make some changes. And also, I think we should require that whether it's presidents or faculty members, college leaders need to convince faculty to raise the bar when it comes to assignments, mentoring, and grading.

[00:41:49] And that includes supporting faculty who step up and demanding accountability for faculty who don't. Just because they have tenure doesn't mean they just get to sit around and do nothing. So it's a very good piece, and it's a classic illustration of caveat emptor, buyer beware. Of course, Charlie Kirk is convinced that college now is one of the biggest scams in America.

[00:42:15] I still think it's important for young people to go to college, especially in certain professions. But not everybody needs to go to college. And believe me, if your child or grandchild goes to college, you better hope that they're going to get some kind of reasonable education, maybe even learn, in some cases, some skills that will enable them to be successful for the rest of their life. That's all we've got for today. We'll do a little bit on how to interpret the Bible tomorrow. I think you'll appreciate that conversation.

[00:42:43] And, again, just wanted to say one more thank you to WPEO for their gracious hospitality. Look forward to being up with our friends at KYCC in just a couple weeks. Most importantly, I want to thank Megan for engineering the program. Steve, thanks for producing the program. And we look forward to seeing you tomorrow right here on Point of View.

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