Inflation, School Choice & the American Dream in Idaho

Bob Neugebauer Welcome to the Idaho Pulse. This is your host. Tea party Bob, bringing you up to date information on the things that are affecting. Our great state of Idaho. And today, we have our good friend, Ronald Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, who will discuss how American culture, the American dream, inflation, and of course, economics one hundred one. So let us welcome Ron Nate to the Idaho Pulse and let’s get on with the show. Welcome, Ron, and thank you for joining us today.

Ron Nate Hello, Bob. Hello. Idaho Pulse and Idaho Pulse. Devoted listeners. Uh, it’s good to be on. I just, uh, Bob’s right on the topics. I had the opportunity to visit a semi annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society this past week. And just so just a little background on what the Philadelphia Society is, it was created back in nineteen sixty four by, bye. Three folks. Um, you may recognize a couple of them. William F Buckley. Remember him?

Bob Neugebauer Oh, yes.

Ron Nate Yeah. English. Uh, I guess, uh, personality, uh, philosopher, political expert, uh, Milton Friedman. And, uh, I think, uh, last the last guy’s name. Finney, if I remember it. Right. But anyway, they developed this Philadelphia society as a place for intellectuals, academics, and policy specialists come together and discuss what good policy looks like, what good philosophy looks like. And, and, uh, promoting the, uh, the American dream. And, uh, so it’s, it’s great to go and hear from some folks who, who study this on a regular basis. Um, not unlike myself, we’re studying policy all the time and to share ideas and I guess best practices and a philosophy that will support the American dream and American goal going forward, and free market principles and, and the prosperity and, and, uh, wealth that derive from that.

Bob Neugebauer Well, are we in a free market? Do we have any more principles? I wonder sometimes.

Ron Nate We are not in a free market. I was fascinated by some of the discussions that, that we had at this meeting. And, uh, one of them, uh, a guy named Robin Hanson from George Mason University. And he presented on American culture and that, uh, over time, American culture is becoming diluted, which is not surprising. Um, and, and that’s, that happens with immigration. It happens with kind of technology and movement of peoples and movement of ideas that, uh, it is hard to preserve a culture that is heterogeneous from the rest of the world. But he also noticed what’s happening too, is that, gosh, it wasn’t so long ago that the rest of the world was becoming like America. I don’t know if you remember that, but we talked about the nineteen eighties and the American culture was being exported to the rest of the world. You know, kids in Asia wanted to be like America. Kids in Europe wanted to be more like America. And, uh, and countries around the world were adopting constitutions that look like a, a lot like the American Constitution. Seems like America was the center of culture. And the rest of the world was following along.

Bob Neugebauer I think what’s happened here is the American dream has become diluted. Like when you add too much water to a stew and the gravy doesn’t quite thicken the way it’s supposed to, instead it becomes diluted and you wind up with many different factions and not the same thing you started with.

Ron Nate Yeah. And so immigration certainly does a bit of that. And it wasn’t so long ago, a hundred years or so ago, where immigration, um, immigrants would come and they would want to become American, so to speak. You know, they wanted to adopt the American culture. You might have had some little enclaves like little Italy or, or, you know, um, Chinatown or whatever that still tried to preserve little, um, oases of their, of their cultures. But for the most part, immigrants wanted to come and become American. But now it is like, uh, every new wave of immigration just dilutes what American culture used to be. And so if you ask somebody to identify what American culture is. Good luck with that. What do you think American culture is, Bob?

Bob Neugebauer I think American culture has become an immigration farce that started about eight to ten years ago, where they said they were deporting all these immigrants, yet we now have about forty million of them here, many of them who are not American citizens, and another fourteen million that just arrived not more than six years ago. So we are not what we used to be. Um, whatever anybody says, you cannot prove that to me because I find it out every day. The American

Ron Nate You know?

Bob Neugebauer dream is what you make it.

Ron Nate Yeah. And I think that a lot of Americans would agree with you. I mean, I’m old enough to remember, um, what my parents saw was the American dream and what American culture was. It was a culture of being proud of your country, of being patriotic, willing to wave the American flag and say, you know, U.S. is number one and root for your team in the Olympics and and root for your companies to do well abroad, root for your kids to do well. And, and, uh, that it was based on freedom that America was, was the freest state that America, you could live and grow and do what you want to do. And family was number one. And, and we were, we were proud of America and our traditions. Nowadays, it seems like, uh, education is devolved. Uh, culture is devolved that, uh, it’s, it’s all about, uh, uh, people being either in victim status or oppressor status that, uh, we, we can’t even get the, the idea of what a man or a woman is, right? Uh, try and promote the American family today. And you’re, you’re castigated as a, as a patriarch or a white supremacist or something like that. Try and promote American ideals of freedom and suddenly you’re against the poor or against immigration. And so there’s there’s all sorts of negatives cast toward people who just want to promote traditional American ideals. And those American ideals, remember, served us well for two hundred years. And now we want to get rid of them somehow and that we think America will be better.

Bob Neugebauer Let me give you a quick scenario. Okay?

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer Born in nineteen forty five. That’s me. Grew up in a very poor household at one time, was homeless. Wound up getting through school. I was kind of a slightly above average student. Decided to go into the Navy because I knew I couldn’t afford to go to college. Came out of the Navy, went to college, didn’t quite get my degree, but was very happy because I learned everything I really needed to know to get into Wall Street, become a broker, become a trader, make a million dollars. Be very happy. And now I’m sitting here at eighty one years old and watching my country go to pot. Because everything has changed. The culture has changed dramatically. And I think much of it is because of the education system that we have. The public education system has been the bane of the changes in American culture.

Ron Nate Yeah, I think that that certainly is is true. And I think most Americans would agree that education has devolved, both in terms of its its rigor and also in terms of its indoctrination toward an ideal that was that’s nothing like the American ideal. I forgot to mention that part of the American culture too, historically, and I don’t think people can disagree with this. It’s largely a Christian culture. And

Bob Neugebauer Absolutely.

Ron Nate yeah, It was founded by by the Christian ethos. And, and it, it, it lasted for, for decades and centuries. But this Robin Hanson guy from George Mason, he says, you know, as we see American culture devolve and we we start raising alarm bells for it. He uses this analogy. It’s like seeing your giant cruise ship headed for an iceberg. And what do you what choices do you have as an American to try and, and survive this one? You can get up there and try and turn the helm, turn the wheel and see if we can steer around this. That is hard. It’s hard to turn a big, massive ship like that and try and get it done. Or he goes. The other option that Americans have is to go to the lifeboats and. And an example of this is like the Amish community. They’re going to try and preserve their culture by separating out from the American culture that’s headed for the bird. And, uh, um, other cultures have done this. Uh, how about how about the Mormons? They used to just separate themselves, but now they have kind of co-opted into it. They’re trying to change American culture within. And what do we see happening? The Mormon culture is getting diluted. Mormons are becoming more like the American culture than the American culture is coming, like the Mormons. And so you have this choice. Do you want to create your enclaves or do you want to try and right the ship? And, uh, both of them sound like they’re full of difficulties.

Bob Neugebauer I think what’s happened is the instructions on how to turn the ship around have

Ron Nate Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer been so diluted. Everybody has forgotten how to do it.

Ron Nate Yeah, yeah. And so I, I don’t know, I, uh. Well, I guess this brings us to the next topic is is looking at, um, what the, uh, what the American dream is, what is the American dream? Do you know where that phrase comes from, by the way?

Bob Neugebauer Yes, it comes from an author, James T Adams.

Ron Nate Yes. James T Adams and he wrote the book that’s called The Epic of America. And I’m going to read part of this quote that defines the American dream. And tell me this. Tell me if you can’t start help thinking about, oh, well, it sounds progressive, but if you read about it in the context of the language of when it was written back in the thirties, um, I think you’ll see it is very much an American dream of about the theory of prosperity and, uh, and pursuing, having the freedom to pursue what you want to pursue without society trying to over influence you. This is it. The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with the opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position. Now I know the end of that. Sounds a little socialist in today’s language, but back then it was more like, it doesn’t matter if you were born into, uh, into a rich family or poor family, your likelihood of success, your ambitions, should guide your future. Your prosperity is determined by you. Your innate abilities and your desire to achieve. And that’s what the American dream is about.

Bob Neugebauer I think that during JT Adams time, uh, we had more influence being pushed into America from European values. They were still hanging on here. They hadn’t disappeared. Um, it was probably not, I think, until the turn of the century that we actually saw, uh, what you would call the American dream. And then, of course, uh, came the Great Depression. So yeah, what is the American dream? Everybody is still hoping that they can find it and many are still searching for it.

Ron Nate Yeah, I agree. Um.

Bob Neugebauer Uh.

Ron Nate If you ask me who my favorite president is, well, George Washington is my favorite. But right there, right on his heels is Calvin Coolidge. And the reason why you mentioned the Great Depression, if you look at the economic statistics going into the Great Depression, you had unemployment going upwards, you had GDP crashing, you had inflation going down, which sounds like a good thing for consumers. But it’s a very bad thing for businesses because if you can’t sell your product for what you paid for, for the resources, you can’t produce the next line of resources. Businesses are going under when prices are dropping dramatically. And so horrible statistics going into that. And so what did FDR do? He did the New Deal, spent like crazy, went into debt, created new social programs, social security, created all sorts of programs. And how did that work? Well, it turned a recession or depression into a Great Depression because it lasted for like ten years, eight to ten years, and it was deeper and longer than any other recession had ever been. Preview that. Do a prequel back into early nineteen twenties Calvin Coolidge is the president. He inherited a stinky economy from Harding and and Woodrow Wilson, where GDP was crashing, unemployment was going up and prices were falling. And it’s it’s amazing. You look at those statistics, they’re almost exactly the same image that FDR inherited. But what did Coolidge do? Did he create new programs? Did he increase government spending? Did he go into debt? The only thing he did was reduce the top income tax rate from what was about seventy percent under Wilson, down to about twenty percent. He did nothing about government programs, government spending. And what did we end up with? Did we end up with Great Depression? No. We ended up with the Roaring Twenties. Getting government out of the way tends to achieve better results than trying to have government fix everything.

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, but that’s what we’re seeing today. When you get a great tax cut like we had during Trump’s first term, you see an economy boom. I mean, we had things happening here that haven’t happened in thirty or forty years. Changes in employment rates, changes in productivity. And now with the extensive change in investment in this country, you’re talking twenty trillion dollars, unheard of in history that

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer has gone. And we’re at the beginning stages of it. And that’s what annoys me, why everybody is complaining. Oh, the price of diesel is that six dollars forty nine cents. Well, buddy, get used to it because if you don’t fix the problem, it’s going to get worse. If you fix the problem, you can improve it.

Ron Nate Yeah. Um, so back to the American dream. Uh, we also had a discussion on are the kids all right? Do you think the kids are all right these days?

Bob Neugebauer No.

Ron Nate I think that one of the biggest problems is we have kids largely being educated in a socialist, uh, education system and

Bob Neugebauer I think

Ron Nate the public

Bob Neugebauer they’re

Ron Nate education.

Bob Neugebauer being

Ron Nate Yep.

Bob Neugebauer I

Ron Nate Go

Bob Neugebauer think

Ron Nate ahead.

Bob Neugebauer they’re being educated by social media.

Ron Nate By social media. And you know what? Here’s, here’s a here’s another problem. We expect less of our kids than our ancestors expected of their kids.

Bob Neugebauer Agreed.

Ron Nate Yeah. That, uh, how about this in surveys? Here’s some, here’s some, here’s some things going on. Twenty twenty six. We are at thirty two year lows in terms of student performance in math and reading. College kids come into college not being able to read. Um, ninety two percent of hiring managers say Gen Z kids are undesirable. Seventeen percent of them report interviewing kids where the kids have brought their parent to the interview.

Bob Neugebauer Can I say something?

Ron Nate Yes.

Bob Neugebauer You know, when you go to college. All right. And you study underwater basket weaving and expect to get a job in by. Well, I should say underwater biology or anything that has to do with something important. Why would you think that the education you got was worth anything? Because you can’t find a job. And the fact that you are two hundred thousand dollars in debt because you went to an Ivy League college puts you even further down the line in terms of trying to dig yourself out. This is where we lie today with so many one point seven trillion in debt for college education. That’s scary.

Ron Nate Yep. Yep. In surveys of parents on how they view education, only one third of parents are okay or pleased with a policy of kids not having phones at school.

Bob Neugebauer That’s also scary. Think about this. Thirty four percent of the kids who have graduated from college and can’t find jobs are living with their parents.

Ron Nate Yep. So, um. Now, that’s not to say that there are no good kids out there. No good parents, no good families. It’s just saying that the, the, the rough median or or average out there does not bode well for the mass of kids coming up through an education system, coming up through a system that, uh, that creates, uh, responsibility, good work, drive energy, all that stuff.

Bob Neugebauer But AI is going to fix everything.

Ron Nate Oh, oh, how about this? I’m going, AI is going to fix everything. Uh, is AI the great equalizer or the great divider? Because AI facilitates kids not having to do as much, but AI is probably going to be controlled and propagated and manipulated by those who know what’s going on. And so maybe it turns out to be a great divider, not a great uniter. MM.

Bob Neugebauer Well,

Ron Nate Just

Bob Neugebauer let

Ron Nate that.

Bob Neugebauer me ask you. Who are the people who are running these huge AI firms? Are they on the right or on the left? On the left of politics.

Ron Nate Boy, that’s a good question. I, I.

Bob Neugebauer I’ve done I’ve done the homework. There on the left.

Ron Nate There on the left. Dun dun dun. Well, that’s not good news, is it?

Bob Neugebauer No, of course not.

Ron Nate Oh, because they’re going to indoctrinate our kids. All right. Well, um. I have a son who’s entering a university in the Midwest. I’m not going to to out him. But anyway, uh, one of his early graduate school, this is graduate school. Uh, they were shown the intersectionality wheel of privilege in one

Bob Neugebauer Oh,

Ron Nate of their

Bob Neugebauer God. Oh,

Ron Nate things.

Bob Neugebauer God.

Ron Nate And the, the closer you get to the center, the more patriarchal and power oriented things are. And so the center circle is surrounded by these things. Are you white? Are you neurotypical, whatever that means stable, able bodied, Christian, rich, adult, post-secondary homeowner? Do you have Drive? Are you Democrat or Republican? Monogamous marriage. Citizen. Salaried. Native. English speaker. Monogamous. Heterosexual. Cisgender. Man. Slim. Muscular. White. NeuroTypical. All of those things incorporate the center of power. And then on the outer wheel, I’ll I’ll read some of these outer wheel ones. Uh, are you visibly homosexual? Gender nonconforming? Uh, infinite fat, super fat, large fat, visibly black. Brown. Uh. Asian. Are you neurodiverse, unmasked, intellectually disabled? Are you vulnerable? Vulnerably disabled? Are you everyone else? Are you poor? Are you minor? Are you a senior? Are you elementary school sheltered, homeless, little to no access. All of those things are the typical categories of those on the fringes. Do

Bob Neugebauer Ron.

Ron Nate you see?

Bob Neugebauer I’d ask for my money back.

Ron Nate Oh, I know, I know. My. My kids started calling me bullseye because I tend to hit the center on all these. But anyway, uh, and it’s just crazy that we think that all of this can create a new generation of productive, driven, uh, hard working and well adjusted kids. I, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy town out there. It’s like all the adults are taking crazy pills and thinking everything will turn out right.

Bob Neugebauer Not me. I don’t have any crazy pills here. See, because I’ve already been through it. I now have four great, great grandchildren that I have to deal with.

Ron Nate Oh, yeah. I hope they stay great.

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, from your lips to God’s ears.

Ron Nate There you go. All right, let’s do my econ one hundred and one lesson today. Today it’s on inflation. Okay. And I’m going to start with a quote from the late, great Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist. Uh, the writer of the Monetary History of America. He is well respected into everything’s monetary. And here is what Milton Friedman says about inflation. You may have already known this. His quote famous quote is that persistent inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. Basically, that prices are simply a function of how much money is out there circulating in the economy.

Bob Neugebauer Absolutely.

Ron Nate That’s it. Now, I even Milton Friedman would not disagree with the fact that all prices do not change by the same amounts all the time. That in general, raising the money supply raises all prices. However, we see right now gas prices going up much more dramatically than any other prices. Is that a monetary phenomenon? Well, in part, but mostly it’s because that market is being dramatically affected in ways that other markets aren’t. Will it bleed through to other markets? Yes. But right now, gas prices are up dramatically, largely because of, uh, expectations, uh, geopolitical consequences of war and conflict, especially in the Middle East, uh, a legacy of destroying refineries in America, not building new refineries, refineries. And so there’s lots of things affecting gas prices, but that market is acutely affected by geopolitical concerns right now. And so you see a dramatic increase in gasoline and diesel prices.

Bob Neugebauer Well. And once you see the increase in gasoline and diesel prices, everything else will follow suit because just about anything you think about is affected by gas and diesel prices, petroleum products in general.

Ron Nate Yep. And so that’s right. It is. Gasoline and fuel is in the supply chain of nearly everything that we produce and consume. And because it’s in that supply chain, it means that these other markets will be affected downstream from that. Now, in my discussion on inflation, I do need to point out that you can have broad inflation, which is the monetary phenomenon that that Friedman’s talking about. But you can have individual market inflation too, that when there’s an increase in demand for a good. And we see this during the summer when people are traveling, more gas prices tend to go up because there’s an increase in demand for gas prices. We’ll see it in terms of of goods and services. You know, when there’s when there’s high demand for concert tickets, for example, the price of concert tickets will go up when there’s high demand for for food stuffs, price of food goes up. So there’s this thing we call demand pull inflation. That higher demand for particular goods and services can drive up those those prices also supply shocks in markets like we just talked about with with gas and oil. But you can have supply shocks in local markets that, I don’t know, maybe there was a a drought in the Midwest. And so you see an increase in the price of wheat and corn for the coming year because of a supply shock in the growing of wheat and corn. Um, you can see, uh, tariffs are a particular supply shock to goods and services coming from abroad. If we have a policy of increasing tariffs, we’re going to have more expensive goods from abroad. And, uh, if people stop buying those goods and start buying domestic goods, those prices will go up. So there can be shocks in markets to either on the demand side or the supply side side that creates prices. Um, and then you can have the broad inflation that comes from monetary, uh, increases. Um. There are costs to this inflation that are not well known. We obviously all hate to see that prices go up while our wages stay the same. But I’ll tell you this. What if prices doubled tomorrow and your wages doubled tomorrow? Are you worse off?

Bob Neugebauer No, you’re about in the same situation, I would guess. Uh, depending on what your situation is, retired or working.

Ron Nate That’s right. And so really the particular pain of inflation is when the prices increase not in pace with your wages increasing. And it is true that wages tend to lag behind other price increases. So even as the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, more money is flowing through the economy. The results are not uniform, and everywhere that prices of goods and services tend to go up first, then wages lag behind. And so there are temporary winners and losers, even in a broad inflation category.

Bob Neugebauer So you’re telling me that we can’t work our way out of this inflation scenario because it’s a spiraling effect? Nobody seems to want to stop it. And indeed, it started so long ago. Everybody forgets how it started.

Ron Nate That’s right. And and I’ll tell you this too, that as as a country, as a government tries to fix its fiscal problems with a monetary cure. And by fiscal problems, I mean spending too much money, borrowing too much money and trying to trying to drive an economy with false government spending and false government ideas. It has to fund those eventually by increasing the money supply to pay off its debts. No country, no country has had its monetary system survive when they have gone into debt by more than one hundred percent of their GDP. They try

Bob Neugebauer Well.

Ron Nate and solve it with a monetary answer and it doesn’t work.

Bob Neugebauer There go the problems that they have in Europe. They can’t float bonds because nobody has a good credit rating anymore. I mean, these people, the European countries are basically broke.

Ron Nate Uh. And hello, America. America. We have, uh, our our overall debt being one hundred and twenty five percent of GDP. We are beyond that threshold of what governments have been able to survive, uh, without crushing their monetary system with a hyperinflation and hyperinflation means that they keep trying to fool the markets by increasing the money supply by more than inflation, and that drives more inflation. And eventually you become a Germany where the the monetary system crashed, or Yugoslavia or Argentina, Brazil. Uh, the the world is full of examples of crashed monetary systems where governments have falsely tried to spend their way out of,

Bob Neugebauer Well,

Ron Nate out

Bob Neugebauer let

Ron Nate of.

Bob Neugebauer me ask you this question. We have somewhere around eighteen to twenty trillion dollars, uh, coming into our country for manufacturing purposes. Do you think that this is a way to dig our self out of the hole that we’re currently in, or is it just going to cause more problems?

Ron Nate I get very nervous when I hear politicians, government officials and presidents say, this is what we need to do to fix the economy, because invariably their fix is going to be some sort of a market manipulation. Really, what they need to do is, uh, cut back on regulations, uh, reduce taxes, and get out of the way of markets when they try and influence markets with another tariff or another increase in spending over here or another program over there. They’re invariably going to make it worse. Let me give you this. One of the speakers I was pleased to hear from was Katherine Mangu Ward. She is from Reason magazine. Uh, she shared a chart that shows price changes in various industries from January of two thousand to December of twenty twenty five. I posted it on my Facebook. So if you look at Ron Nate, Facebook, you can see posted this chart and it shows that inflation overall for those five years was about ninety two point six percent. Industries that experienced higher than that rate of inflation were these. See if you can see something in common with these. And I’m going from the the inflation that’s closest to ninety two point six percent over those five years to the highest one food and beverages, housing, medical care services, child care and nursery school, college textbooks, college tuition, hospital.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I can see each and every one of them as being responsible for the changes that took place. Having started building a house in twenty twenty and finishing it a year later, and now I see what it costs to build this house now the price

Ron Nate Yeah,

Bob Neugebauer has tripled.

Ron Nate yeah. And and why is housing, why are housing costs so much? Twenty five percent of the cost of building a new house is permits, fees and government regulations. Did you know that,

Bob Neugebauer Absolutely

Ron Nate um,

Bob Neugebauer right.

Ron Nate all of these industries are heavily influenced, regulated or manipulated by government, healthcare, college, child care, medical care services, housing, food and beverages. They all exceeded the average of inflation over those five years. Here’s the industries that experienced lower inflation or actually deflation over those five years. New cars. Household furnishing clothing. Cell phones. Computer services, toys, TVs. Notice those are all kind of frivolous things. The things we like, not the things we necessarily need. So it’s an interesting government gets involved in the necessity industries and drives up their costs dramatically. Government stays, relatively speaking, out of the frivolous industries, and those costs drop dramatically and stark. Case in point healthcare services through the roof two hundred and eighty percent over five years, two hundred and eighty percent over five years. Lasik eye surgery not covered by insurance. Not influenced by government. It is lowering costs and higher in quality.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I see the same thing happening and things like cataract surgery, you

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer know, they don’t cover a lot of these medical costs. Um, I even take a look at what’s going on in dentistry. A lot of that is not covered from

Ron Nate Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer medical services. And those

Ron Nate Yeah.

Bob Neugebauer costs have dropped dramatically in many cases.

Ron Nate Yeah. But I’m being careful here not to talk about insurance. I’m talking about government involvement, government manipulation here everywhere the government has tried to touch to make it more affordable, Obama said. Affordable healthcare everywhere. They try and touch it, make it affordable. They make it less affordable, less quality and less available.

Bob Neugebauer Well, but look at what Obama did to the building industry with all the changes and regulations on how thick your walls have to be, how much insulation you need to have.

Ron Nate How

Bob Neugebauer I

Ron Nate much

Bob Neugebauer mean

Ron Nate water can be in your toilet.

Bob Neugebauer exactly.

Ron Nate How many watts can be in your light bulb? Yes,

Bob Neugebauer Yes.

Ron Nate all these things. So, um, again, speaks to my point as a mission of the Idaho Freedom Foundation is we want to root out all, all instances of Marxism and socialism so we can restore Idaho to American founding principles so that all Idahoans can thrive and prosper. Uh, and that means, uh, just saying, you know what? Government just just stop worrying about everything. Stop trying to raise our kids. Stop trying to manipulate our industries. Get out of the way, lower taxes, and let Americans be American and let markets work. They’re amazing things.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I will tell you, we talked about, uh, the, uh, school choice many times.

Ron Nate Mhm.

Bob Neugebauer If you notice that each and every year for the last three to four years, the enrollment in public schools has continued to decline.

Ron Nate Uh, yeah. Yeah. And, uh, every time you present parents with the option of, of avoiding public schools, taking their money elsewhere, keeping their money and putting on private schools instead of paying it in taxes like Idaho does with the education income tax credit. Um, you will, uh, see people choose private schools. And by the way, that improves the education for those kids. And it also puts public schools on notice and they tend to improve as well. It’s a beautiful thing.

Bob Neugebauer I only wish they did more of it.

Ron Nate Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Me too. So

Bob Neugebauer You know.

Ron Nate anyway, that’s that is the work of if let’s get government out of these industries, let’s get government out of public schools. And we can see Idahoans, uh, live in a society that has become a beacon, become an oasis of American founding principles in Idaho can thrive and prosper.

Bob Neugebauer See, this is why I enjoy talking to you, because you actually have some rationale to what’s happening in the real world.

Ron Nate And well, thanks. I enjoy talking to you for the same reason too. And I want to be optimistic about this. We can do this. We can stop Idaho from becoming the next Colorado. We can be a beacon of hope and freedom in America. We just need to, uh, make sure our elections are electing people who are committed to these principles and don’t just talk the talk. That’s why we do a freedom index. That’s why we’re going to do a local government freedom index as well. Cities and counties, and a judicial freedom index. We want Idahoans to be able to choose freedom at every turn.

Bob Neugebauer Well, I only wish you all the good luck in the world to get it done, because what I’m seeing here, and what I have seen in the last twenty to twenty five years in this state is a severe change from a state that was much freer than it currently is, and much of it has to do with the political arena and how it has swayed from concern for the public to concern for the corporate.

Ron Nate Yeah, yeah I agree, I agree. So, um. The battle is real, you and I, uh, and, and a lot of great freedom loving Idahoans are in the same battle here. Um, we, we might be outnumbered, but we’re, we’re not out principled. We’re, we’re right on principle. Therefore, the cause is just. We’re happy warriors. Let’s get it done.

Bob Neugebauer I agree, my friend. Let’s see what we can do. Keep fighting.

Ron Nate All right. Idaho pulse rocks. It’s always a pleasure to be on your show, Bob.

Bob Neugebauer Thank you again for your time.

Ron Nate You bet.