Hi, Billy cunning in the Great America. Welcome this Thursday afternoon in the Tri State Reds Baseball kicks off to not of course, tomorrow they're on the big one starting about two thirty five, Dela Cruz is hitting the how hide off the ball. Great things are happening there in Tito, I trust. But until then, there was a lot of
good news about Warren County. And of course the president of the Commission there is David Young, who's the main instigator of keeping the tennis tournament in Mason, etc. And David Young, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And I read this in one of the journals about Warren County. There's about three thousand, two hundred counties in America, and Warren County is number five. Is it a good list or a bad list?
You know, sometimes I've gotten on some bad lists of my life, especially when I was trolling the halls of Sycamore High School, I was on some bad lists. But right now we're on a very good list. And that list is average weekly wage growth AROSS the entire nation. In our beloved Warren County ranked number five in the nation in the increase in average weekly wage increase, and that went from roughly sixty six thousand dollars annualized a year ago up nine point seven percent to seventy two
five hundred dollars in a year. So the people inside of our county, their wages are rising. Good.
In other words, these are private employers, private people, and not government.
One hundred percent. Government can't pay people ten percent more year every year. It's the private sector. Free market capitalism works. When the market decides they want to invest in you, your community, your people, then good stuff happens.
Now do you know the instigator for this? What is it?
Because so much of America is under stress. I see the power grid may have some rolling blackouts this summer because we're not invested in that. I see the roads. I see your good friend mayor a feb purerival yesterday, was on a road crew filling thousands and thousands of potholes. They've filled over seven thousand potholes and haven't touched most of them. They can't cover snow and eyes, they can't
remove it in the city of Cincinnati. Explain to me what Warren County's doing rights is causing this to happen.
Well, essentially, I think there's a mentality that government can't do everything for everyone, that we stay in our lane for the most part. And again I'm not talking about cutting out every government service to people that actually needed, you know, widows, orphans, disabled folks, of course, veterans. Of course, we should be there as a government, and a lot of that money does come down from the federal government
through the state and is passed on to us. But you know, we have our own veterans levees and things like that inside of the county, so we're actually part of our sales tax as opposed to a levee. But we try to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. But everybody else in the free market economy, we expect them to be productive. We're not going to pay you to sit home and do nothing. So the
workforce is super super engaged, Willy. As a matter of fact, out of two hundred and fifty thousand residents, over one hundred thousand employees inside of the county. Take a guess how many in the last time I checked, and it's been a couple of quarters ago, take a guess how many were actually on the unemployment role inside.
Of Warren county. I would assume very few, just around.
Five hundred kind of over one hundred thousand employees. And again assuming national unemployment rates what around three percent or four percent? I mean that should be several thousand people, and it's not. It's like five hundred people.
And it's because of available work. You know one thing that concerns me all these jobs coming back to America, I'm not sure we have our workforce trained and willing to work. Medicaid is going to be cut a little bit. If you're a healthy American and you refuse to work and you get government benefits and you're under fifty five years old, Trump's going to make you go to work in order to get Medicaid benefits. And that mentality is out there that I'm here and you government must support me.
Are you concerned that long term we're going to not have a workforce to handle the jobs that Trump's going to bring back.
There is a fine balance in a free market of supply and demand, and when you have too much demand and not enough supply. Look what happened even recently under paying people not to work. And this is exactly what happened during COVID. We paid people not to go to work. And there's some justification for that because you know, we didn't know there for a while, but then people got used to getting these government checks and they left the workforce.
So what happened Then demand came back, and then what happened Wages started spiking because there was not the workforce there. And the number one cause of systemic inflation is wage pressure. And you and I talked about that a long time ago. If you remember, Willy, when the Jerome pal and the Federal Reserve was coming out talking about, oh, this is
just transitory inflation, and I said, no, it's not. Because once you start paying somebody that was working out in the Amazon factor or distribution center fifteen bucks, and now all of a sudden, you got to pay them twenty bucks next month, you're not going back to paying the new employee fifteen dollars. That's systemic. Once it goes that wage is set from fifteen to twenty bucks, everybody subsequent to that is going to be making the twenty bucks.
It's not going backwards. So that's entrenched in our economic conditions. So that's my concern is if you start all of a sudden saying hey, there's a huge demand for workers and there's a limited supply of workers, all of a sudden, wages are going to shoot up, not naturally like we've had in Warren County, where it really is a supply
and demand issue and it's in balance. Where you artificially spike the demand for workers, wages are going to shoot up, and then I don't know how you avoid inflationary pressures.
In fact, I listened to an economists this morning through Bloomberg who said that inflation is here to stay because there's an imbalance between supply and demand. That is that we have a large demand for employees and we have a smaller supply, and the more illegal immigrants that leave, that's going to cause wage pressures to go up, which means inflation is going to be here for a long time.
Do you buy into that to some degree?
Yes, And again that's where I think that we one hundred percent need to change our immigration policy to greatly expand our guest worker program.
Yes.
You know, if we can track a package within ten feet of anywhere in the world, how in the world can we not have a guest worker program to where, hey, you're not on a path to citizenship. You necessarily don't even necessarily want a path of citizenship. You want to come here and earn money for your family and send it back by working in the fields or doing drywall or doing construction or whatever. You're going to do a job that is very difficult for us to fill with
US citizens. So we import workers that that's a better opportunity for them. They make more money while they're here, they send it a lot of it back. But while they're gamefully employed, they're welcome to be here as long as they comply with the law. But then once they're done, and we know when they're done with their employment, then they have to leave. You know, Trump, they're paying into our system. I don't understand why we.
Don't do that.
And Trump believes in that too, because we need to have millions of guest workers. And if Americans come out of living in high school or come out of taft and don't want to work, or they don't have the work ethic, and they shouldn't be supported by taxes and government than guest workers that come here, fingerprints, EPrints, whatever it takes. Know who you are, work, do what you got to do. Allow them to send money back home,
whatever it might be, and get that done now. Secondly, I want to get your reaction to the Tuesday night speech. Of the Trump's speech, he won over several eight twenty items that the Democrats loathe, and by the way, this morning Al Green, not the great singer, but the congressman appears to have been censored. But nonetheless, when he talked about criminal illegal aliens out of the country, that's eighty twenty.
When he talked about the men not playing women's sports and boys at Levin In High School not going into the girls locker room, that's probably a ninety ten issue. Were you amazed at the reaction of the Democrats on Tuesday night?
I mean, I think there's something we've talked a lot in politics about playing cards. You and I maybe have played a little cards in our life, and when you're playing poker, you don't want to overplay your hand, and right now I think the Democrats are overplaying their hand. That they have such viscery. I mean, they just literally hate Donald Trump. I hate to say that, but they just can't stand him, and so anything that comes out of his mouth, they are saying, we can't agree with
a little boy. That's you know a cancer survivor that they make a secret service agent. You're going to sit on your hands for that? Are you kidding me? I mean, so it's this worthy opposition. We're the resistance. Nothing this guy can do is going to be popular, as you said, even though eighty ninety percent of Americans are putting on the common sense hat of of course this makes sense. Of course we want to do this. Why aren't we
doing this? And for them to be adamantly opposed to every policy position and say nothing that can come out of his mouth is true, it's just wrong. And I think they're overplaying their hand and I think they're going to pay a price for it.
And as far as tariff's, in addition, being a commissioner, you're like an economist, you're a business owner, et cetera. Tariffs can be extremely useful because I am told that there's close to a trillion dollar annual trade deficit. In other words, all these countries around the world have tariffs keeping on American products, but our walls are down, their
tariffs come in. Don't you think in the next month or two this is all going to work out and it's going to be an agreement of one type or another and the market will return to sanity.
Well I think that.
Yeah, I mean right now, the number one thing the stock market in particular doesn't like is uncertainty. And right now we have to some degree nothing but uncertainty because the things are changing and it's a rapidly evolving situation. So as you know a guy with an economics background, that that's always unsettling because we don't know exactly what it is. But when you peel back the onion, what
are we trying to accomplish. It's really fair trade that if someone has artificial barriers, like the Canadians that have what a two hundred and forty percent tariff on our dairy products, that's not fair. So if you want to have that, then we're going to hit you with something. And then the goal would be for all of these tariffs to go away to where it truly is a
free market and we don't have protected industries. As a guy with an economics background, that's what I would like to see is more open fair trade to where you're good at they're good at something, and we trade back and forth and you focus on what you're actually good at. But yeah, this idea that America has the intellectual capital that we produce most of the startups in the world. We come up with most of the new products in the world, not every new product, but from drugs or
technology or AI. Most of the new inventions that have been for the good of humanity have come from the US. And so that stuff is then gone out and benefited all these trading partners. And then for them to say, yeah, but we can't let the US dominate our market, so now we're going to restrict their products. Then we can do the same thing back. So over time it might be a little messy here, but over time, you know this idea of balance fair trade.
I'm for balance fair trade.
Now, lastly, on marijuana, I have on a state Senator Huffman on Monday to talk about marijuana. We Ohioan's voted like fifty eight percent with the marijuana statue. And you and I both know the Governor, Mike DeWine and the head of the House in the Senate right now, neither one of those guys like marijuana at all. They think we made a mistake in voting for recreational marijuana on top of medical marijuana. And so now right now there's
about five thousand Ohioans working in marijuana. Whether it's in the laboratories or the processors or in the stores. You have a large number of people working and they're productive. This year, one billion dollars will be taken out of the pockets of drug dealers who otherwise would have a billion dollars of Ohioan's money buying marijuana and god knows
what else. And it's being taxed to ten percent, which means the state's getting one hundred million dollars, which is a paltry sum compared to the fifty five billion dollar annual budget, but it is something. But you know, from my perspective, I would afford and encourage that because I like the idea of drug dealers making less money, and I like the idea of people going to work making a product to which so many of my fellow Ohioans
and Kentuckians want to use. And so now they want to double from ten percent to twenty and cut around the edges to make it more difficult, and don't give the townships and the small cities that allow these dispensaries to get to three point six percent. Can you are can you tell the American people in Warren County. What is happening with recreational and medical pod in Warren County? And where do you stand on the state almost regulating it out of existence?
For the most part, I am certainly no expert on this issue. That a lot of times this is coming up in our municipalities that they are regulating or trying to regulate marijuana much more than I am.
At the county.
So it really hasn't come before me yet of trying to make a decision on what we want to try to make this look like. But as a simple guy, I go back to some fundamentals. It's all about supplying demand, Willie. I hate to say it, that there is a demand. Marijuana has been something that's been prevalent in our country for sixty years, and people know the upside, the downside, or what have you, and there is a demand for it. So now we're coming with a choice, which is what
you were alluding to, who's going to supply it? There are people that are going to supply it. The demand is there, it's going to be filled, and so now are we're going to have it to where it's in the government's purview to be regulated and taxed and to some degree hopefully made safer because it's not going to be painted because you're buying it from an established, reputable place and it's not laced with scentinol or something crazy
that's going to kill somebody. So that's the it's a binary choice in my in my opinion, that it's here, it's not going away. You know, people know the side effects of it, and hopefully, you know, people are making their own decisions, but that's up to them. I mean, I'm, you know, kind of a libertarian at heart that that's their own personal choice. They know the upside and downside of this, and why not have this in the purview of the government where it can be regulated and taxed.
Well, State liquor stores are everywhere, and alcohol causes is much more difficulties in marijuana. No one gets high on marijuana and starts bar our fights. No one gets high on marijuana and starts driving recklessly. But with a liquor and the states in that business, that happens all the time. And if push comes to shove, the marijuana industry will put on a constitutional amendment instead of a legislative fix. And if it's a constitutional amendment like the damn abortion
thing that got passed. Then the state legislature and the governor will have nothing to do with changing that law. And we don't want that constitutional amendment. Do you agree that they ought to work together with the industry to come up with a solution.
Billy, It's exactly what I said before about overplaying your hand. That's exactly what happened on the abortion and people that were pro life. Look what we got stuck with because in my opinion, we overplayed our hand a little bit because that's not where the public was. Marijuana is the same thing. Don't overplay the hand because then you're going to start talking about what Portland where all drugs are going to be legal and we're going to have it.
I mean, it would be sickening. You know, Let people have what they want within confines, have it regulated, but don't try to overplay the hand and say nothing zero tolerance.
And David Young, Warren County Commissioner. Once again, but there's about three thousand and two under counties all of America. As far as wage growth, Warren County, Little Warren County is number five in the nation, which no other counties even close to that, have you thought about conducting classes for Hamilton County, Kenton County, Boone County, Butler County and all other counties. Have you thought about doing classes?
I don't know that anyone in certain counties would sign up for a masterclass, Willy, but it is very heartening that when you know, I hate to lose on anything. Hence, you know what we collectively tried to do in Warren County with tennis and things like that. But when we think about being number five in the nation, it's like, why aren't we number one? Well, you know, I actually went back and looked at who's number one at through four the counties that beat us in wage growth and
the nation willing I'll name them for you. Number one the home of this company called Walmart, Arkansas. Number two and number three were two counties in California that were a home of a company called Meta Facebook, and the other one was the home of Google and county. Number four is Midland County, Texas, where it's the home of most of the major oil companies in our nation. So we lost out to the counties that are home to Walmart, Google, Facebook,
and oil companies. And then that's Warren County, and I'm not exaggerating. That is literally the four counties that beat us.
Good work only getting better with the Cincinnati Open coming in July and August is going to be great. And David Young once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. And David, you're a great American. Thank you.
God bless you, Willie, and God bless America.
All right, let's continue with more news is next plus my comments on all the current issues happening in this great country of ours. Plus Reds Baseball kicks off three weeks from today. Get ready for my great speech at the Holy Grail on Thursday. Three weeks from today. Is the Reds played the Giants? All the news Radio seven hundred WLW