that s how the economy moves on, but i think people have maybe to your point, reverend, reflected a little more. listen, it s been a crap year, okay? i m sorry for the language. with these types of shootings, aurora, colorado, hurricane sandy, droughts in the midwest, people losing their farms. it s been a very difficult year for a lot of people, and i think maybe this season people were nesting a little more and reflecting on what was important for them in a good way. people were still in shock. you re not going to run to the malls a week after newtown will not leave us ever. well, i mean, you see 20 babies being buried, 7 adults, and you don t say, let s go to the mall and shop. bingo. and especially people that have parents. imagine those parents watching kids going under the tree like i experienced with this lady in harlem, every kid that went under the tree reminds her of a
was great. i think the difference is the economy was improving, incomes were going up, housing prices were going up, people felt better. home prices are going up. that s a good thing, and the income issue is where we need to solve the problem. that s right. people can handle higher taxes if they make more money. part of that i m going to get preachy here, reverend. the american people have to make a decision about what s important. keeping your neighbors employed. i know cost matters to a lot of people. my parents poet grew up poor. look the at what you buying if it koths made in mechanic and kips your neighbor working at a higher wage at a u.s. facility, think about that decision you re pak maiking. there s no country in the world sorry i m off on a tangent. there s no country in the world where wages are high but goods are sold cheaply. you can t have both.
they couldn t come up with 2,000 if they needed to come up with it without selling belongings or taking out a payday loan or going to a desperate measures. to argue that those people shouldn t save is a big mistake. absolutely. gin that we have an economy 70% consumer spending, how can we have a scenability recovery when you have stats like that, half population doesn t have $2,000 in the the pockets. i think athat s why the recovery so so anemic and nobody predicts we ll have a robust recovery. we ll have a slow slide. i ll give you my view, okay, which is let s not forget the fiscal cliff takes us back to the clinton era tax rates. i remember a lot of people on this network saying how great it was back then. we re going back to the clinton era tax rates and we boom then. the reason it didn t pinch us then, now it s deem and then it
why. here s why they think, as you suggest, it s okay to go over the cliff. the story basically boils down to saying, they re crazy, but they re not dumb. it s very irresponsible, given the potential outdock and unknowns, but here s what they think politically. what we see is a confident president and a defensive republican caucus. the president, he won one on this issue as they tell you. the polling shows they will blame republicans. why should he cut what he considered a bad deal? republicans say the president s is has played overplayed his hand, and they think eventually people will want to keep the bush tax cuts. that assumes that noog bad happens in the economy, which they could both be blamed for. that s why we have the president flying back from hawaii.
you begin getting closer to that peace and good and bad happens in all of our lives. that s part of what life is. the bad makes the good better, and the good prepares you for the bad. i like that. bad make the good better. i like that. so don t start crying on the air, i m going to bring it back to business a little bit am we re going to wait and get the retail data soon, and early indications are it s not a great number. people are saying, well, the fiscal cliff, and i m sure that s part of it. sandy is a part of it. i think there s a part of it, too, and this is just anecdotal myself and some friends i talked about. when you had what happened in newtown, shortly before christmas, you know, in the new year and hanukkah and you start to think, what is it all about, right? i think it s brought at least some of my friends have they ve shopped less. is that a good thing? i m not making a judgment on what people do with the economy. i know we need to sell things.