Hello! Hey!
I have guests! Ok!
100% of my net worth I would write it to the U.S. government if it would solve the problem.
And my children, who will all become millionaires when I die, then they would lose all that.
I think that’s too bad.
We had this piece commissioned. We go to Saratoga to the horse races every year, love Saratoga.
There's not a brush stroke on that artwork. So the whole thing is painted by dribbling
paint on the piece and then moving it around like this so the paint runs and he paints
the Statue of Liberty, and as I've told you before, I'm kind of an American fanatic.
I love this country at a very, very deep level and the Statue of Liberty to me is a great
representation of what this country is all about and should be all about.
This is scary.
Anybody that reads this and doesn't understand this is precisely what bothers me with my
country because my class, we wealthy people, are the ones that are not only contributing
to this, but supporting this mindset and all for our own short term, our own life’s gain.
I mean, we're all gonna die. So why would we want to do those kinds of things to our
fellow man just so we can achieve more power, or more money, or more houses? Why would we
want to do that when we're still gonna die? I just think the goodness will, should, win
out. I'm not naive enough to think that it always will, but it should win out. Where
was it? Oh yeah, there it is.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Producer] What'd you think?
I mean the fact — if I were ever going to write a book, I would
like to write it myself. And he's never written any of these things himself. He's always had
ghostwriters that have written everything for him. His books, I think, are kind of a joke.
The guy doesn't read. He has no desire to know detail. He's just not a deep dive guy.
He's an emotional, seat-of-the-pants decision maker, and that is not the way you
run a country. I also don’t think it’s the way you write a book either, but that's
neither here nor there.
So here's where the pretty magic is done. This is where we actually print the card.
We're a what is known as a surface printing company, which means we literally print on
top of an existing pre-manufactured plastic card. The cards already have the magnetic
stripes on them and it's just a card that's manufactured to the same specifications of
your standard Visa or MasterCard material.
So you can see, the card had no ink on it before,
and now it’s a fully printed product. And when it started at the other end of this
press, it was only white, white on both sides.
When faced with this question about being a good business decision to pay people a living wage,
it all goes back, I think, to what Henry Ford said a hundred years ago, and that is
he wants his people to be able to make enough money to buy his cars. That's a good sound
business decision and I can get that. If you pay money to the people who actually spend it,
then they're going to lift the economy. If we lifted the wages across the country,
if we took our average wage, pick any number, a dollar an hour, five dollars an hour,
whatever that number is, and we lift wages up, it is unequivocally going to go into consumption.
And consumption represents 66% of the U.S. economy. So, would we be better off putting
billions of extra dollars in the hands of the people who are gonna go to J.C. Penney's,
who's struggling, or to Wal-Mart, who's not, or to General Motors and buy another car?
Would we be better putting it in their pockets or would we be better off putting it in the
pockets of people like me who already have plenty of money, who, I already own everything
that I want. I'm not gonna go spend the money on consumables, because I've already consumed
all that I want. Why not put the money in the pockets of those who will spend it?
It's just to me a good business decision.
Hey, Ruth. How you doing?
Doin’ ok.
Great.
Ruth is one of my number one employees.
Been with me for what? 8 or 10 years?
Oh no!
It's been a while.
Ruth is, she's what, 24 now?
Almost 25.
25 years old and works 4, 5 days a week, right?
Yeah, she works every day.
Can I tell them how old you are?
I don’t care.
She's 94.
I’m 95.
95!
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
95, works every day. Most amazing employee we have, bar none.
Well you know, this whole discussion about taxes over the years has always been a shiny
object discussion in my opinion. What they do is they'll hold up the shiny object in
front of you and it talks about how it’s gonna grow jobs, how it’ll improve the economy,
and that the country is going to do a lot better, and oh by the way, while that's happening,
then they'll pay more taxes. But the truth of the matter is, they've got another object
behind their back, which is really what the object is that they're focused on, and that
is keeping more of their money. Do you really think the Koch's honestly care about whether
or not the economy does better for everybody else? They don't care about that. They care
about figuring out a construct that will allow them to keep more of their money. And it all
comes back down to that single term, and that's greed. That's all there is to it.
So you tell me: Where is the money going in this country?
It’s going to we rich people and we least need it.
Hey, Red, how you doing buddy? Ashley. Jorge.
So what I tell people, typically, when we're
doing these tours, is that in there, in the press room, is where we make the card pretty,
but out here's where we actually make them work. In other words, this is where we encode
the data on the magnetic stripe so that the cards will function in the retail environment
where they're going to ultimately be used.
One thing that I'm particularly proud of, because it's a very expensive thing for us
to do, but our building is completely 100% heated and cooled year-round with geothermal systems.
So what we did when we built the building, we drilled 33 300-foot holes that are under
our parking lot and so we exchange the warm variance in the ground temperature in the
wintertime and put that warm air into the building and in the summertime we switch that
process. We take the hot air in the building, put it into the ground, and bring out cold
air to cool the building. It's a fairly significant savings in utilities, but obviously, I think
it's the right thing to do from an ecological perspective.
My goal is, when I retire, I’m gonna learn how to cook, I’m gonna learn how to play
the piano, and I’m gonna learn how to speak Spanish. Those are my 3 goals when I retire.
Doors were opened, opportunities were presented, that I probably wouldn't have been presented with,
or the doors would not have opened as easily, had I not been a white guy.
And the thing that amazes me is the white guys that just don’t want to recognize that.
I'm not saying that we need to be handicapped in any other way, you know, cut one of legs off,
or only let us get 2 years of college so we can be fairly handicapped,
I’m just saying, let’s be aware of that.
Let’s be appreciative of the fact that that is the case, and then
when we do reach plateaus, like the plateau that I’m at, then we’ll feel some degree
of responsibility to give back, to help others. I mean, people that are naive enough to not
realize that this country was built on immigration and everybody was not always white,
everybody were not European white guys, that people of color live and they exist out there and
they have as much right to the same opportunities as anybody does.
Look, I read everything Ayn Rand ever wrote. But I never subscribed to all of her philosophies,
and that is: ‘government is all bad.’ That we need to get rid of all the government.
Even those people who say that we should have small government, in fact, some of them say
we should have no government, they don’t really believe that. They really believe that
they don’t want the part of government that does the things for our citizens
That they don’t want to have taken care of.
They don’t want universal health care.
They don't want a mother that has multiple children
for her to have health care for her kids,
or even food for her kids, or education.
Everybody needs to be taken care of in this society.
I am in the health care center of the United States of America.
Nashville is where Managed Health Care, Hospital Management Ownership,
this is the core.
But even we don’t want to deliver health care to everyone
and I think it’s a travesty.
Everybody in this country,
if not the world, but certainly this country, deserves health care. You don’t need to
have to make a decision whether you’re going to eat or not or you’re gonna go to the doctor.
If you’re sick, you should be able to go to the doctor and receive health care
as opposed to buying a loaf of bread and some baloney. You shouldn’t have to make that
decision, but a lot of people in this country do and it’s just wrong. It’s just wrong.
It doesn’t need to be this way.
Did I answer your question?
And we are headed down to see, or attempt to see, someone at Senator Lamar Alexander's office.
Senator Alexander is one of the two senators that represent, one of the two Republican
senators I might add, that represent the state of Tennessee in Washington, D.C..
Senator Alexander's been around the political circle of Tennessee for all of his adult life.
In fact, to be quite honest with you, I don't think he's ever had a regular job.
I have attempted to see Senator Alexander in Washington, D.C
on at least two occasions and have never
been able to get him to meet with me. We have met with a couple of his staffers on a few occasions,
but Senator Alexander’s always been too busy with other things to meet with me.
I suspect that there's something connected to the fact that I have an opposing view to
his political position on a lot of things. But the one thing I would like to talk with
him today about is the minimum wage.
I know I can get into that spot but I just wonder if there’s another one that's a little bigger.
This guy did a great job of parking.
Well here we are. In the elevator going up to
see somebody that doesn't want to see us. It's not always easy being me.
Not it.
Let me ask this guy.
Can you tell me where Senator Alexander's office is?
It's right across the hall is, first door on your right.
Ok, thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Oh well. No video.
All he was doing was meeting with me. That's all he was doing. All I felt like he was doing
was just fulfilling his obligation to meet with a constituent. And that's all.
I had no feeling of understanding or agreement or empathy whatsoever. You know, it's hard for
me to believe though, I mean I would say this, right? I don't see how anybody can see it differently.
I don't see how anybody can feel differently about the minimum wage law
than the way I feel because of the position that I have on it I think is irrefutable and
that is that there are a lot of employers who would take advantage of unsophisticated
workers and pay them as little as they possibly could. I don't see how anybody can fight argument.
I don't know what what counter they could offer that would make that issue go away.
And he offered nothing.
All my wealthy friends think I'm crazy.
I think they're crazy.
I think they're the ones that are missing the boat.
And it just amazes me that they don't understand how shortsighted
their approach to running a country is and it will not last. We cannot continue to run
this country the way we are for long.
It may last our lifetimes, but that's pretty selfish, isn't it?
That we don't concern ourselves more with our children, and probably more
importantly our grandchildren, that's a pretty selfish shortsighted view
and I don't think it's really the American way.