Host Neal Asbury opened his nationally syndicated “Neal Asbury’s Made in America” show on Radio America (now on 48 stations) with some trepidation about the astounding IPO (Initial Public Offering) for China’s Alibaba’s wholesale e-tail site, which carried an initial market capitalization of $250 billion, and processes some 11.3 billion orders a year.
Co-host Dr. Rich Roffman compared it to the initial enthusiasm when Blockbuster first went public during the 1990s, and characterized the Alibaba IPO as the “current investment darling of the 21st century.”
Weighing in on the Alibaba IPO was frequent guest Seton Motley, consultant, founder and president of Less Government, who advised listeners not to compare Alibaba to Amazon or E-Bay since Alibaba is essentially a wholesaler and does not conduct one-on-one on-line retail transactions (although an auxiliary Alibaba site does host a standard retail commerce site).
“Alibaba needs to make some refinements to their website and fulfillment operations, but with the money they have raised, this shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t think Amazon needs to feel threatened by Alibaba since they really don’t compete in the same marketplace,” proposed Motley.
He suggested that while many American companies may look at Alibaba as a threat, it actually will give American companies a look into Chinese business operations and perhaps provide greater access to the Chinese market.
Neal noted that Alibaba’s IPO comes at a time when Chinese manufacturing is weakening as rising salaries make some Chinese goods less competitive on the global market.
Seguing to a different discussion, Neal noted that this is the fiftieth anniversary of LBJ’s ambitious War on Poverty, which has cost American taxpayers some $22 trillion to date, with almost no progress in reducing the number of America’s poor.
Agreeing completely with Neal’s assessment of the War on Poverty was first time guest, Robert Rector, a leading national authority on poverty, the U.S. welfare system and immigration and is a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow.
“Over 100 million people, about one third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S. And today the Census will almost certainly proclaim that around 14 percent of Americans are still poor. The present poverty rate is almost exactly the same as it was in 1967 a few years after the War on Poverty started. Census data actually shows that poverty has gotten worse over the last 40 years,” according to Rector.
However, Rector suggests that these numbers are misleading. He notes that according to government surveys, the typical family that Census identifies as “poor” has air conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer in his home. Forty percent have a wide screen HDTV and another 40 percent have Internet access. Three quarters of the poor own a car and roughly a third have two or more cars. (These numbers are not the result of the current bad economy pushing middle class families into poverty; instead, they reflect a steady improvement in living conditions among the poor for many decades.)
“Judged by that standard, the War on Poverty has been a colossal flop. The welfare state has undermined self-sufficiency by discouraging work and penalizing marriage. When the War on Poverty began seven percent of children were born outside marriage. Today, 42 percent of children are. By eroding marriage, the welfare state has made many Americans less capable of self-support than they were when the War on Poverty began,” concluded Rector.
Joining the show was Christopher C. Horner, who serves as a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who discovered that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, texted a leading Green activist attorney and others that the Obama administration would go to war against oil and gas regarding global warming.
“As early as 2009, there is evidence that the Obama administration would do everything they could to tie global warming to oil and gas production. We have come to understand that this was never about climate control, but a way to push the progressive agenda, and reward big Obama supporters. This was at the expense of thousands of energy jobs,” noted Horner.
Dr. Roffman added that the Obama administration allowed the Sierra Club to essentially stop construction of a Duke Energy power plant in North Carolina that would have created hundreds of good paying jobs.
David Williams of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance revealed the shocking news that rooftop solar panels are largely a scam, promulgated by companies such as Solar City, that promise homeowners that installing solar panels will give them government energy credits, which actually only go to the solar panel installer.
“This is a new business model based on pure cronyism that supports the Obama administration’s solar initiative while also rewarding supporters with energy rebates that push solar panels. In essence, these solar panel companies install a panel on a homeowner’s roof without revealing that the homeowner is only leasing the panel and doesn’t own it. The panel installer retains ownership and gets the tax credit, and when the home is sold, the new owner must agree to keep the panel or it will be removed,” noted Williams.
Neal and Dr. Roffman moved on to their weekly segment identifying rampant cronyism.
“Remember the sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera for almost $500 million in January, which made partners Al Gore and Joel Hyatt multimillionaires? Well, it appears that they are suing Al Jazeera for allegedly trying to “seize” $65 million in escrow funds. But now Al Jazeera is countersuing Current TV’s co-founders for “misrepresentations.” Al Gore, what a great American!” said Dr. Roffman facetiously.
Dr. Roffman continued his warning to fast food workers that the more they seek higher wages, the faster they will be replaced by robots. Robot sales are proliferating around the world and many U.S companies are looking to convert labor intensive jobs to jobs that robots could do faster and for less money.
And finally, Dr. Roffman marveled that while the AFL-CIO promotes its role in attacking income inequality, its own union officials have made millions in compensation over the years, and draw salaries in the mid-six figures.
Each week Neal Asbury’ Made in America provides Neal’s insights into the week’s top news stories and their impact on the worlds of entrepreneurship, small business ownership and the overall economy. Neal’s analysis, together with co-host Dr. Richard Roffman, a veteran 30-year publisher with extensive domestic and international experience, takes a non-biased approach based on real life experience in business as an American manufacturer and exporter. Made in America airs nationally each Saturday from 7-8:00 PM on Radio America. Link to Made in America at http://www.nealasburysmadeinamerica.com.
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