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  • - Good evening.

  • I'm Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science

  • and Sociology here at The CUNY Graduate Center

  • and I'm also director of The Stone Center

  • on socioeconomic inequality,

  • one of the hosts for this evening's event,

  • and it's my pleasure to welcome you this evening.

  • Welcome to those of you in the Elebash Recital Hall

  • and welcome to our viewers joining via live stream.

  • Let me just say a few words about

  • the City University of New York and The Graduate Center

  • for those of you who might not be familiar with CUNY

  • or The Graduate Center.

  • CUNY, which of course serves the city of New York

  • is the country's largest urban public university

  • and the third largest university system

  • in the United States.

  • We have 25 campuses, about 275000 matriculated students

  • and nearly 7000 professors.

  • Among the overarching themes

  • to be raised this evening is inequality,

  • and in my view, there's no more appropriate setting

  • in which to discuss inequality than here at CUNY.

  • CUNY itself is a massive project aimed

  • at reducing socioeconomic inequality

  • and enabling intergenerational mobility.

  • When our first college, The City College of New York,

  • was founded in 1847, it was described as an experiment

  • whose purpose was to educate

  • the children of the whole people.

  • And over 170 years later, our mission is intact.

  • CUNY, with a design unique in the United States,

  • has dedicated one of its campuses to graduate study

  • and that's The Graduate Center where we are this evening,

  • The Graduate Center, a small school embedded

  • in this large system enrolls nearly 5000 graduate students

  • across an array of disciplines.

  • The Graduate Center is strongly committed

  • to CUNY's historic mission, we provide access

  • to doctoral education for diverse groups

  • of talented students including those

  • who have been underrepresented in higher education.

  • In the last decade, the graduate center has set,

  • among its highest priorities, expanding our capacity

  • in research and teaching in the field

  • of socioeconomic inequality

  • with an emphasis on empirical work,

  • high quality data and quantitative methods.

  • One of our primary goals is to contribute to

  • and to deepen the complicated national

  • and international conversation about economic inequality

  • that has received so much attention in recent years.

  • This evening's event will address several of the economic,

  • political and institutional challenges that many of us here

  • at The Graduate Center and throughout CUNY

  • have grappled with in recent years.

  • The Graduate Center is now home

  • to more than 30 research centers

  • and institutes including our own,

  • The Stone Center on Socioeconomic Inequality.

  • The center's mission is to build and disseminate knowledge

  • related to the causes, nature and consequences

  • of multiple forms of socioeconomic inequality.

  • The Stone Center has six core faculty members,

  • myself, Leslie McCall who's on stage,

  • Miles Corak, Paul Krugman,

  • Salvatore Morelli and Branko Milanovic.

  • Tonight, The Graduate Center and The Stone Center

  • are delighted to be partnering with The Guardian

  • whose new series, 'Broken Capitalism',

  • addresses the question of why discontent with capitalism

  • is rising and asks if it can be repaired.

  • Richard Reeves, from whom you'll hear in just a moment,

  • is the guest editor for this Guardian series.

  • Richard is bringing together an extraordinary group

  • of scholars, politicians, writers and activists

  • to reflect on this critical topic.

  • I encourage you to follow this series

  • which will run throughout the summer

  • and we're extremely pleased tonight

  • to offer this companion live event

  • which will examine the topic of democracy and capitalism

  • asking the fundamental and rather ambitious question,

  • can they co-exist?

  • Tonight's event is also part of The Graduate Center's

  • two year initiative of scholarship and public programs

  • called the Promise and Perils of Democracy

  • which is supported in part by a grant

  • from the Carnegie Corporation New York.

  • And now without further ado,

  • I'd like to introduce our moderator

  • for tonight, Richard Reeves.

  • Richard is a senior fellow in economic studies

  • at the Brookings Institution where he's also co-director

  • of the Center on Children and Families.

  • He's author of the highly praised book,

  • 'Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class

  • 'Is Leaving Everyone in the Dust,

  • 'Why That's a Problem, and What to Do About It.

  • 'Richard will introduce our distinguished panel.'

  • Richard, I turn the evening over to you.

  • - Thank you Janet for that great introduction.

  • (audience applauding)

  • It's my great pleasure to be moderating this panel today

  • and to be guest editing The Guardian series.

  • It's a deliberately provocative title of course,

  • the idea that capitalism and democracy can't coexist

  • is a provocative one.

  • It's one we wouldn't have even asked ourselves

  • not so very long ago and probably the thinking behind

  • the title of this evening's event but also this series

  • is to think about the connections between

  • our political system, our forms of governance and democracy

  • and our economic system.

  • So it goes, it wasn't that long ago

  • when we wouldn't even ask,

  • not only not asking a question whether they can coexist

  • but also they seem like natural bedfellows.

  • Those long enough memories,

  • we remember the end of history being declared,

  • the end of the Cold War and there's just this sense

  • that broadly market based economies

  • would come together, converge together

  • with broadly representative political systems.

  • It seemed to be the way the world was converging

  • but now we're seeing the rise of illiberal democracies,

  • the rise of state forms of capitalism.

  • And a real question being asked now

  • which is how do the traditional ways

  • in which market based economies operate,

  • really interact with political systems

  • and particularly with democratic systems.

  • And Janet has already set up very well

  • by talking about the rise in inequality,

  • sluggish income growth especially in the middle

  • and the bottom and growing fears about climate crisis.

  • The promise of capitalism is one that is being questioned

  • as, I would say, as never before

  • but certainly more strongly questioned

  • than in recent history.

  • In some polling you'll now see

  • significant numbers of Americans especially millennials

  • and those who support a democrat party

  • saying that they actually kind of veer more

  • towards socialism than capitalism.

  • On closer investigation of course,

  • what they really mean is more social democracy,

  • something more like a welfare state

  • and so being clear in our definitions is important too.

  • And so what I'm gonna do is introduce our three speakers

  • who are gonna speak to this kind of question

  • and what does it mean to be a citizen

  • in both a political democracy and a participant

  • in a capitalist economy, what does that mean now?

  • Where are the pressure points?

  • Why are we having this conversation at all?

  • They'll each give some brief comments,

  • I'll then moderate the discussion between the panelists

  • and then we'll throw it open to the floor for Q&A.

  • I'm gonna offer brief introductions

  • because obviously you can look online

  • to see more about our distinguished panel.

  • And I'm going to introduce in the order

  • in which they're going to speak.

  • So first we're gonna hear from Andrew Yang.

  • Andrew Yang is a tech entrepreneur, he's a philanthropist,

  • he founded 'Venture for America'

  • and he's author of most recent book of

  • 'The War on Normal People:

  • 'The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs

  • 'and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future.'

  • I apologize in advance to the other panelists.

  • I don't have their book in my hand.

  • That's because they didn't just give it to me

  • whereas Andrew cleverly gave me the book,

  • literally as I'm walking on the stage

  • so that's excellent marketing.

  • And Mr. Yang is of course

  • well known for other activities.

  • He's enjoying a particularly high public profile right now.

  • Many people are supporting him

  • and are interested in his policies.

  • That of course he is here today as a thought leader.

  • And then we're gonna hear from Leslie

  • who's one your far right.

  • Leslie McCall, Janet's already mentioned.

  • She's presidential professor of sociology here at CUNY

  • and she's the executive director

  • of The Stone Center that Janet runs.

  • She is the author of 'The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs

  • 'about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution.'

  • And then you'll hear last from Vanessa Williamson

  • who's on your left.

  • Vanessa is a senior fellow at the best think tank

  • in the world, the Brookings Institution.

  • It's just, there are surveys of these things apparently,

  • and she is author of 'Read My Lips: Why Americans

  • 'Are Proud to Pay Taxes.'

  • And so between the panelists we have really rich experience

  • of both business but also academia and political science.

  • And so I'll stop talking and hand over

  • to Andrew to kick us off.

  • Welcome.

  • - Thank you Richard and thank you

  • for the generous introduction.

  • It's true, I do carry copies of my book around

  • just wherever I go.

  • So I was fascinated by the question

  • and scaffolding for this conversation as well

  • because I grew up thinking that capitalism and democracy

  • were natural bedfellows.

  • And that the problem right now is that we're dealing

  • with this distorted version of each and so now it seems like

  • neither is functioning very well, which is accurate.

  • And one of the quotes I like to share

  • is from a friend of mine, Eric Weinstein,

  • who said that we never knew that capitalism

  • was gonna get eaten by its son, technology

  • which is unfortunately the era we're entering

  • where we're entering this win or take all economy

  • that is breaking down many of the capitalist relationships

  • we take for granted.

  • So for example, in the 1970s,

  • if I started a successful company,

  • you could make a number of assumptions.

  • I would have to hire lots of people to feel my growth,

  • I would need to treat them moderately well

  • maybe so they could buy my offering like Henry Ford

  • and buy my car and I would need to care

  • about what happens in my backyard

  • because my workers live there, I live there et cetera.

  • Today none of that is true.

  • I can start a successful company that does not need

  • to hire lots of people or if I do hire people,

  • they have a very specialized skill set.

  • If I hire lots of people, let's call them Uber drivers,

  • I do not need to treat them very well,

  • I do not need to give them benefits

  • and I don't have to care about my own backyard

  • because I don't sell in any one place, I sell everywhere.

  • And so there are all of these underpinnings

  • of what you thought the economic benefits would be

  • to growth that are not translating to the broader population

  • and then you have a democracy that's being held captive

  • in many ways by the same moneyed interests,

  • and that's why young people today are coming of age

  • where they think capitalism hasn't served

  • their interests very well and they're correct,

  • so you can't fault them.

  • And so if I had grown up during this era,

  • I too would be very dubious given

  • the record levels of student loan debt

  • and the underemployment and everything else.

  • So we need to fix both systems.

  • We need to fix both capitalisms that it functions

  • better for more Americans and then we need

  • to return democracy to our people as fast as possible.

  • - [Richard] Thank you, Leslie.

  • - Thanks, thanks very much Richard.

  • So I wanna back to this specifically looking

  • at the issue of economic inequality which is what I study

  • and which has already been raised as perhaps

  • one of the central tensions between capitalism

  • on the one hand which fosters inequality

  • and today fosters extreme levels of inequality,

  • and democracy on the other hand which seeks

  • to alleviate inequality and in fact

  • does alleviate inequality but certainly

  • not to the extent that it should nowadays.

  • And I wanna illustrate this tension first with

  • an anecdote that I think also offers

  • a little bit of historical context for the discussion

  • that we'll have tonight.

  • So I started studying the politics of inequality

  • in the early 2000s, and specifically public opinion

  • and public views about economic inequality,

  • about the economy, about related public policy issues

  • and starting with the 2004 presidential election,

  • friends and colleagues of mine who knew

  • that I studied this issue would say to me,

  • "Wow, Leslie, isn't it great that the issue

  • "of economic inequality is receiving

  • "so much attention these days?"

  • And then they said it again, a different group of people

  • said it again in 2008 and then in 2012 and 2016

  • and of course nowadays everyone says,

  • isn't the most important issue in this year's

  • or 2020's presidential election is in economic inequality.

  • And so this has been a real concern because in fact

  • economic inequality hasn't really changed very much

  • over that time period, really hasn't changed at all.

  • If anything it's grown.

  • And so my response has always been,

  • throughout this period, pretty much the same

  • which is yes, it's a step forward,

  • the politicians and other thought leaders

  • and influential groups such as journalists,

  • academics, policy advocates, business leaders even

  • that they're starting to catch up, is what I argue,

  • they're starting to catch up with where

  • the American people have been for a long time

  • which is actually opposed to extreme levels

  • of economic inequality.

  • So they're catching up but one thing that they have avoided

  • talking about is what I consider, based on my research,

  • the central problem that Americans are concerned about

  • which is the lack of a fair economy

  • and the lack of a broadly, broadly inclusive economy,

  • what some people call stakeholder capitalism

  • and which I also see as very much rooted

  • in the civil rights movement

  • and in particular equal employment and equal pay doctrine.

  • So coming back to the present,

  • I think the fact, as Richard said,

  • the fact that we are talking about this issue

  • in such bold grandiose terms as capitalism

  • and democracy, I think is very much a step forward

  • because up until this point,

  • the discussion in the past presidential elections,

  • and I'm just using that as an example,

  • and this has been true throughout

  • in the political discussion,

  • I don't believe that that elite level political discussion

  • has fairly represented the American people

  • and the public interest on issues of economic inequality

  • and maybe that is starting to change.

  • - I just wanna say it's past time talking about it,

  • we should do something about it.

  • - Yeah, absolutely.

  • (audience applauding)

  • - [Richard] Vanessa.

  • - So when I was asked to think about this question

  • of whether capitalism and democracy can coexist,

  • the sort of punitive into that occurred to me

  • which I'm gonna try and defend is that we don't know

  • because we haven't tried.

  • I really do mean that in a way because when you think about,

  • the basic tension which we've already been talking about

  • is if capitalism concentrates wealth,

  • it thereby concentrates power.

  • And if we concentrate power, that is at odds

  • with the democratic system, right?

  • And you might consider that there are some kind of threshold

  • below which a little bit of concentration, not so bad

  • but certainly I think we'd all agree

  • that we're on the far side of whatever that threshold is.

  • But when we think about how we've developed capitalism,

  • we've never done it in a way that valued people equally.

  • And you only have to look as far as the gender pay gap,

  • the racial wealth gap, to see that some people's labor

  • has never been fairly valued and those are the same people

  • whose political voices have never been fairly valued.

  • And so I think that if we're gonna think

  • about whether capitalism and democracy can coexist,

  • we first have to ask ourselves if we've ever given either

  • the testing that it might warrant.

  • And in particular I think we should think about

  • whether we can imagine a system

  • that creates immense inequality as acceptable

  • if we actually do think of all people as equal.

  • - Thank you.

  • And thank you to all of you for keeping

  • your comments so brief at the beginning

  • and giving us plenty of time for discussion.

  • I wanna push, I think I'll probably push all of you on this,

  • the nature of the problem

  • and whether it's an economic failure

  • or it's a political failure to deal with economic trends.

  • And I think this is quite an important distinction

  • to make in this debate 'cause you can say that capitalism,

  • market economies generate inequality, yes they do,

  • they're supposed to, they only work

  • if they generate inequality

  • but we then have a collective responsibility

  • to ensure that the winners don't win too big

  • and the losers don't get kind of left behind

  • but that's a political decision.

  • And in fact, depending on how you calculate it,

  • if the US just redistributed more

  • along the lines of other countries then the resulting levels

  • of inequality wouldn't be that different.

  • So I guess what I'm asking is there a danger here

  • that we're blaming capitalism for the failures

  • of the political system and that we should instead

  • just be trying to fix it a political level.

  • So you could do two things for example,

  • you could redistribute more but you could also

  • reform, camp and finance.

  • So the cumulation of wealth as power can have

  • a very different effect in a country

  • that doesn't have funding of politics to one that does.

  • So the broader question is who's really at fault here.

  • Why don't we start with you Vanessa

  • 'cause you kicked me off.

  • - So I think that it's a mistake to imagine

  • that markets aren't political by nature.

  • Markets are a political outcome,

  • exactly the same as the tax system

  • because markets are governed by laws

  • and laws are made by lawmakers

  • who in our country we still elect for now.

  • I always do.

  • My point is that when you're thinking about a market system,

  • it's not something that somehow

  • precedes the political economy.

  • The market isn't something that happens.

  • It's not that everyone has a couple of apple trees

  • and then goes to the market and exchanges

  • and then the king came along and took some taxes.

  • It's not sort of a simplified version of the economy.

  • Entire industries rise and fall based on whether

  • we enforce antitrust laws.

  • The legalization of marijuana has created entire industries

  • that are now legal industries that never existed before.

  • So I think it's a mistake to imagine that market economies,

  • there's an economy that preexists

  • the political institutions.

  • And I think that when we think about what the solutions are

  • to the concentration of wealth,

  • we need to think both about the laws that govern

  • how money gets distributed first and the laws about

  • how the money gets redistributed thereafter.

  • - [Richard] Right, so markets are political institutions

  • and predistribution as well as redistribution

  • is a political decision.

  • Andrew, do you wanna weigh in?

  • - The example I use that everyone understands most directly

  • is how did Amazon pay zero in taxes in 2018,

  • how did the trillion dollar tech company

  • pay less than the federal taxes

  • than the vast majority of people in this room?

  • And that is a colossal political failure

  • at the highest levels.

  • It's clearly completely opposite of what you'd want,

  • particularly because Amazon is soaking up

  • another 20 billion dollars in commerce every year

  • that is now pushing 30% of malls

  • and main street stores to close, and being a retail worker

  • is still the most common job in this country.

  • The average retail worker is a 39-year-old woman

  • making between 10 and $11 an hour.

  • So if you look at that equation, 30% of the stores close,

  • cashiers get sent home, meager savings,

  • not much in the way of path forward and zero in return.

  • That's public policy and political failure

  • at the highest levels.

  • So we've created this system and then people look around

  • to your point that's like market.

  • And every other advanced economy already has a mechanism

  • in place to avoid something like Amazon paying zero taxes.

  • And that was not an anomaly.

  • Their lifetime tax rate is only 3%.

  • And so you look at that and you say

  • any of the cries of where are the resources?

  • It's like where are the resources?

  • So you just look around and who's benefiting the most

  • from our current arrangement which I agree

  • is a completely political decision that we've done

  • but we've done it very passively

  • and now we have to actively correct for it.

  • So one suggestion that would help everything is that

  • if we just gave every American citizen 100 democracy dollars

  • that you could then contribute to any candidate

  • or political campaign, that would wash out

  • the lobbyist money by a factor of five.

  • That would actually make it so that politicians

  • would listen to constituents as opposed to people

  • because right now as a politician,

  • if you get people behind you,

  • you then have to get the money some place else

  • and who has the money?

  • Rich companies and rich individuals.

  • So who do you listen to?

  • Rich companies and rich individuals.

  • If you could get 10000 people behind you

  • and that's a million dollars

  • and then the company starts waving 50, 100000 at you

  • you'd be like I don't care about your 50, 100000,

  • I'll just listen to the people who voted me in the office.

  • So that's the kind of dramatic fix that we need

  • to try and strengthen a democracy

  • that would then turn to the Amazons of the world

  • and say you're paying zero taxes make no sense at all.

  • - So rather than trying to stop corporate money

  • you crowd it out with citizen's money basically.

  • I wanna tell us about the Amazon thing.

  • I'm gonna come to you in a little bit.

  • The Amazon is a great example I think

  • because if you're sitting on the board of Amazon

  • on the current regulator environments and you're making

  • a decision about what to do about reducing your tax bill

  • you've got shareholders then the right thing to do

  • is try and reduce your tax bill as much as possible.

  • But there are people who are attacking Amazon.

  • They're saying there's something wrong with Amazon.

  • What I think I'm hearing you say,

  • Leslie's gonna weigh on this

  • is Amazon aren't doing anything wrong,

  • they're playing by the rules of the game.

  • It's the game that's the fault.

  • And it does seem to me that's quite an important distinction

  • in who we decide is at fault here, who are the villains.

  • If people are just profit maximizing in a market economy,

  • that's kind of what they're supposed to do, isn't it?

  • Or are they supposed to work differently?

  • - Leslie come in and we'll come back.

  • - I just wanna say it's ridiculous

  • that we're berating these corporate leaders

  • like they're supposed to self regulate.

  • That makes no sense.

  • It's their job to make as much money as possible.

  • - [Richard] I think that's an answer to the question then.

  • What about you Leslie?

  • - I wanna take the question really seriously

  • because in reality what politicians are doing

  • is they are taking a hands-off

  • perspective on the economy,

  • that there's technological change, there's globalization,

  • there are these dynamics

  • that we as politicians can't interfere with

  • or if we do interfere with them

  • then there might be job loss, for example.

  • And so we can see what Amazon has done.

  • This very issue of threatening job loss

  • and imposing or intervening

  • in political processes in the City of Seattle,

  • in New York City all throughout,

  • actually overturning past legislation in Seattle

  • that was meant to increase taxes

  • on individuals within, actually on corporations

  • that make more than 20 million dollars in revenue

  • and the tax would be on the corporations per employee head.

  • This was passed by the Seattle City Council

  • in order to help fund housing, more affordable housing.

  • Apparently, I'm not an expert on this

  • but I think there are parallels to the New York City case

  • but apparently Amazon had said that

  • they were supportive of this policy.

  • Well, it turns out they weren't supportive

  • and they created an organization with Starbucks

  • and other large companies called, what was it called?

  • No Taxes on Jobs.

  • So the fear is about if you do regulate

  • then corporations can come back and say

  • I'm taking my jobs and leaving.

  • So that's the reality.

  • - They're able to do what Vanessa's talking about

  • which is to turn economic power into political power.

  • It's the way that these spheres of power,

  • how porous are the boundaries between them?

  • But Vanessa I wanna come to you and ask you to respond

  • to my challenge on Amazon not doing anything wrong

  • partly because your own work is about attitudes towards tax,

  • I think more among individuals and wrapping a question

  • which I wanna ask all of you but I'll ask you first

  • which is the sense of what does a citizen owe

  • to the collective and what does it mean

  • as an act of citizenship

  • as an individual to be paying taxes or contributing

  • but maybe also as a company.

  • - Yeah, so I think that first of all

  • if we're gonna talk about the ways

  • in which economic power affects our political system,

  • part of it is campaign finance but the other part is that

  • we have starved the public sector

  • in these really critical ways.

  • Legislators don't have the resources they need

  • so they rely on lobbyists.

  • So people don't like to talk about the fact

  • that congress needs more money,

  • not so we can fly congressmen around

  • in planes more effectively but so that

  • they can hire they staff that they need

  • so that the only information they get about legislation

  • doesn't come from the Amazons of the world.

  • So I think that's a really big piece of it

  • when we think about how to rebalance political power

  • and economic inequality.

  • On the question of taxation,

  • so my book has a controversial title.

  • I say that Americans are proud to pay taxes

  • but being proud is not the same as being happy.

  • And if you look for this rhetoric,

  • you really hear it all the time.

  • People talk about themselves as taxpayers.

  • They say, I pay my taxes which is weird

  • because paying taxes is mandatory

  • so giving yourself credit for doing so seems a little odd

  • but it's a really common rhetorical device

  • in the United States.

  • And it's actually backed by a lot of civic sentiment.

  • People see tax paying as part of their obligation

  • as a citizen, right?

  • And as something that they do to contribute

  • to their community.

  • I sort of push people in these interviews.

  • In surveys the rates are remarkably.

  • You get 90 plus, 95 plus and 10% of Americans agreeing

  • that tax paying is a civic duty

  • which is almost unheard of in survey data.

  • Similar questions can be asked about

  • whether all this still alive then you get 90,

  • 90 plus percent of Americans agreeing on something.

  • But I thought this was just nice, happy talk in a survey

  • but the thing is it comes up in interviews.

  • So if you talk to people about taxation,

  • it doesn't take long before they start talking about,

  • they feel that their government owes them something,

  • and not necessarily in the form of a check holder,

  • I would imagine that's pretty popular too

  • but in the sense that they chipped in

  • so they deserve to be heard.

  • And people get very very angry.

  • They bring it up without being asked

  • which I always think it's a real sign

  • that if someone actually cares about this idea

  • that these corporations they are paying less in taxes

  • than I did and I'm making $30000 a year, whatever it is.

  • Those kinds of comments are very common

  • and I think fundamentally it's a very positive trait

  • that Americans still, after many decades of antitax rhetoric

  • in this country still use taxation as a way

  • of talking about what contribution,

  • what part of one's labor one should give to the public.

  • - So I'm gonna put some of these together

  • and I'll ask the question.

  • And we'll start with you Leslie and come back this way.

  • So what we're hearing is economic inequality is real

  • and is growing, it's a very salient political issue

  • within huge economic divisions geographically,

  • occupationally, certainly in terms of people's pay packets,

  • big wealth gaps, so any iconic inequality, big problem.

  • People are really worried about that,

  • people are proud if not happy to pay their taxes

  • and they know that the system's not working for them.

  • I'm just summarizing kind of various things

  • that I've heard from three of you so far.

  • So why are we where we are then?

  • If all of those things are true,

  • why are we actually going through,

  • if anything, policy is going the other way.

  • Policy is going to increase inequality.

  • Certainly, fiscal policy will at the moment.

  • If the ingredients that you've all identified are correct

  • why are we getting this dish served to us?

  • Because the way you've just described it,

  • we should be living in a democratic

  • socialist America already.

  • So what's the gap between the analysis and action?

  • Leslie, why don't we start with you.

  • - Sure, so we've already talked about one pathway

  • which is the economic power and influence

  • that people with a lot of money have on public policy.

  • So I wanna talk about the sort of other side of this

  • which is even apart from the influence

  • that money has on politics, I actually think

  • that politicians genuinely believe

  • that they cannot affect the economy,

  • that they cannot intervene in the economy

  • in really significant ways.

  • Maybe the only exception is the minimum wage

  • which is hugely popular but yet there's a lot of debate

  • and controversy over the minimum wage as well

  • lifting it up to $15.

  • So I think this is really a major hurdle

  • and because politicians don't offer genuine remedies

  • to the problem of low wages, to the lack of benefits,

  • these are workplace problems, right?

  • So we're not talking about solutions

  • like increasing taxes on the rich.

  • I'm talking about changing the work environment,

  • compensation, benefits and so on.

  • These kinds of policies are just pretty much off limits.

  • And what I would argue, is that that discourages voters.

  • They're not interested in politics

  • because the kinds of policies that they would like to see

  • which is essentially a stronger

  • more thriving economy for everyone,

  • that that hasn't been on the table.

  • So that discourages participation

  • and I think that's extremely important.

  • There's this mismatch in other words

  • between what politicians are offering

  • in terms of solving these problems

  • and what people actually want.

  • - We say collective fatalism

  • about our ability to do it.

  • But you've already the fact and this, I think, will help

  • you Andrew mope and motivate some of your own work.

  • If you say this is gonna kill jobs

  • then it's not quite game over in terms of political debate

  • but it's really difficult to recover from that.

  • And so a higher minimum wage does reduce employment

  • at the margins in some circumstances

  • but the benefits will mostly outweigh it.

  • The best studies, I think Kruger Card,

  • this will get boring really fast

  • but Kruger Card, they show some effect or be of some effect.

  • It's almost impossible to believe that raising the price

  • of labor would have some effect on labor market

  • but they tend to be pretty marginal in the long-run,

  • probably increases in productivity bla bla bla.

  • But f there's any evidence it's gonna cost any jobs at all

  • then all the other benefits that come from it,

  • reducing poverty et cetera, just get blown out of the water

  • because jobs, everyone cares so much about jobs

  • and if they're afraid of jobs

  • and it almost ends the debate right there

  • which is why we think about something else.

  • - Just one last point on this.

  • The problem is that then people think

  • that it's jobs and that's it versus what kind of jobs.

  • That's they key thing.

  • - [Richard] Any job will do if it's not true.

  • - The example of Amazon in New York City,

  • a very very tough issue, I'm not gonna pretend

  • that there was a right and wrong answer here.

  • So the loss of 25000 jobs, you can't treat that lightly.

  • On the other hand,

  • then that becomes the center of the conversation,

  • that it's only about those 25000 jobs

  • versus all the other aspects of the inequality issue

  • that are so central.

  • It's not just about the jobs but the character of the jobs,

  • the pay, the benefits and all of the other surrounding jobs

  • as well as lots of infrastructure and housing.

  • There are so many issues involved.

  • - [Richard] Okay, Vanessa then Andrew.

  • - I think that one of the sort of paradoxical aspects

  • of this is that as the economy gets weaker

  • and as the social safety net has been weakened,

  • your need for a job gets stronger.

  • So you might imagine that some part of that rhetoric

  • actually grows as you undercut every kind of security.

  • I wanted to make one additional point about why...

  • - [Richard] It's a very interesting point there

  • 'cause then it's a viscous circle, isn't it?

  • Then you've created a situation where

  • the very absence of support means that the job...

  • - Right, so it can actually get harder to convince people

  • to believe that change is possible

  • when peoples lives get harder and that just makes sense.

  • It's unfortunate and it's something we have to overcome.

  • The other point I wanted to make was that

  • when we're thinking about why we don't get policy outcomes

  • that look like what any regular poll of Americans

  • would tell you which is that there are all sorts of things

  • like family leave, minimum wage, Medicare,

  • all these policies that are hugely popular,

  • why we don't have them and why instead we have policies

  • that were hugely unpopular like the tax cuts and jobs act.

  • I think it's important to remember that in general,

  • public opinion does not make public policy.

  • What makes public policy is organized interests

  • operating for the party system.

  • And there's no reason really to expect

  • that average opinion would drive policy in general

  • because politics requires organization

  • but especially in a system like ours

  • which is so inert about and we're certainly built

  • to avoid majority rule, right?

  • - Andrew you might have thought a little bit

  • about the intersection between policy and politics.

  • - So first, I think we should all be offended

  • by the spectacle of Amazon pitting communities

  • against each other to see who could bend over backwards more

  • for a pure ordained process.

  • That's thousands of man hours put forward

  • by hundreds of communities around their country

  • just to show again the primacy, again,

  • of a company saying I have jobs, you need jobs,

  • let's see what you can do.

  • We shouldn't make any of these local tax inducements

  • just 100% taxable and just get rid

  • of the beauty contest forever because

  • from a national point of view it makes no difference to us

  • which city or state a company is based in

  • as long as it's in the United States of America.

  • So having someone move within the country

  • produces no net economic benefits.

  • All we're doing is giving the companies more money

  • that some of these communities can't afford,

  • a lot of the benefits they promise don't materialize,

  • we should all be offended by that.

  • But what that does is it illustrates what Leslie is saying

  • is that we have so brainwashed into thinking

  • that human worth and economic worth are the same thing

  • that we are contorting ourselves

  • and increasingly attenuated in ridiculous fashion.

  • Why else would we imagine that we could turn

  • thousands of coal miners into software engineers.

  • That actually makes no sense.

  • But when you look at, you say,

  • well, your current function has zero market value

  • thus you have no market value, thus we will pretend

  • we can turn you into something that does have market value

  • because we can't even tell the difference anymore.

  • My wife is at home with our two boys

  • one of whom is autistic, what is her market value?

  • What is her work calculated at in GDP?

  • Zero, and we have to get beyond the market's estimation

  • of our worth because the market is about to turn on us

  • in historic catastrophic fashion.

  • When artificial intelligence lands for real

  • and there are 3 1/2 million Americans

  • who drive a truck for a living right now

  • and the trucks start driving themselves in five to 10 years,

  • do you wanna be the person that say,

  • "Hey, you were worth $46000 last year

  • "and now you're worth zero."

  • Tell that to half a million 49-year-old men

  • who see their livelihood about to go down the drain.

  • We have to get our heads up and realize that the market

  • is a highly flawed determinate of what our value is.

  • We have to unbrainwash ourselves really.

  • 'Cause this is what Leslie's point is.

  • It's like hey, we haven't been presented with an option

  • and the American people are getting increasingly desperate.

  • Bernie Sanders legitimately

  • could have won the nomination last time

  • if the DNC hadn't sand bagged him and kneecapped him

  • and we all know that happened.

  • And then Donald Trump, this avatar of distorted,

  • dark tainted populism, actually he's our president today.

  • And people are looking up being like 'Huh.'

  • Like well, this is an aberration.

  • This is not aberration.

  • We're in the historic disintegration of our way of life.

  • Our life expectancy has declined for the last three years

  • due to and suicides and drug overdoses.

  • Cheerleading this GDP number being at record highs

  • makes no sense when your people

  • are dying younger and sooner.

  • This is the desperation we are in.

  • People are looking around and saying

  • what does the democracy hold.

  • And our politicians aren't able

  • to respond to that challenge because

  • they're too busy doing the fundraising for this.

  • - I'm gonna stop you there

  • 'cause I got a feeling if I don't stop you soon

  • we're gonna keep going.

  • And it's not that I don't appreciate the direction

  • you're thinking in but I do wanna bring the conversation

  • to the next part which I think you'll appreciate

  • which is what does the state owe citizens?

  • Would it be something like a UBI?

  • But there's a prelude to that.

  • I do wanna guess one more go at

  • how deep this problem is economically.

  • Because I would say there's the prevailing consensus

  • would be yes there are problems,

  • there is too much inequality,

  • we should be doing more to help workers

  • but it's a question that kind of fixes, essentially,

  • that that can be done through a series of reforms

  • many of which have already been mentioned,

  • but it's not a profound shift in the capacity of markets

  • to deliver increased well-being to most citizens.

  • It's a failure to regulate the market to do that.

  • But what you're now saying Andrew

  • is something's about to be very different

  • and maybe we're already getting the start

  • of that big difference which is actually we're gonna see

  • a detachment between economic growth

  • and people's well-being.

  • The connective tissue between the economy growing

  • and people getting better off is stretching and might break.

  • It seems to me that the answer to that question

  • profoundly influences everything we think

  • about policy and politics from now.

  • So I'm pretty sure I know where you're gonna come out

  • on that Andrew but I'd like to hear, first of all,

  • Vanessa and then have Leslie on do you think

  • it's as deep as not just fixing but really

  • it aint gonna deliver in the way,

  • the machine just is not gonna deliver in the way

  • for the reasons Andrews suggests.

  • - I have pretty dim view of the future

  • but not for the same reasons precisely

  • but the dimness is similar.

  • I feel like a kinship on that front.

  • And to me the, and the place where I go

  • where I worry is climate change.

  • I don't think that there's any evidence right now

  • that our current economy has any capacity

  • to deal with the problem that is absolutely cataclysmic.

  • I don't think that there is any reason to believe

  • or there's any evidence that the kind of economies

  • we've built in the past have any capacity

  • to deal with genuine resource shortages.

  • That is not what market economies

  • have shown any of it.

  • And so I think that we have

  • a very very limited period of time

  • to make some absolutely revolutionary changes.

  • - But that's, I do wanna come on but that's again

  • whose fault is that?

  • The fact that the market doesn't care about the planet

  • is not the market's fault.

  • Any more, like capitalism doesn't care about a planet

  • but actually communism wasn't great either.

  • And in fact I think you can then argue

  • that the kind of despoiling of some of the lakes

  • in the former Soviet Union is

  • what would have been unthinkable

  • in the great lakes of the US.

  • And so I don't think that that's something

  • we can put at the door of capitalism.

  • And so the point of a political system of any kind

  • that just fails to act in the long run, is that fair?

  • - I think that it's clear that the economy of the future

  • can't look like any of the economies in the past.

  • I don't think mercantilism

  • would have handled the problem well either,

  • at least as far I can think off the top of my head.

  • But the point is that we clearly need to make major changes

  • and those changes have to be different from what we've done,

  • different from what's been tried in the past,

  • and I wanna add one more point to this.

  • The other piece that I think is really critical

  • to thinking about climate change is to get back

  • to this question of whose valued

  • because I think that when we think about

  • what jobs have market value, it's striking

  • how often it is women and people of color

  • whose jobs have no market value and that is true

  • no matter what work women and people of color do.

  • When computer coders were women of color,

  • they didn't get paid real well.

  • It was still computer coding, now it's really well paid.

  • There are some other reasons as well

  • but the primary one I would is say is

  • that people with power get money.

  • - Leslie go first and then

  • I'm gonna come to you Andrew, I promise.

  • - I do think there's a debate on right now

  • among economists which is fairly new,

  • it's not my field, I'm not an economist

  • but it's about the anticompetitive behavior

  • of corporations, it's about the concentration of power

  • in corporations, it's about the things that they do,

  • there are mandatory arbitration systems,

  • there are no disclosure contracts,

  • there are no compete contracts,

  • there are all kinds of anticompetitive behavior

  • that are creating greater power for corporations

  • and reducing the power of workers.

  • And workers don't have, just in the absence of unions

  • there's no one able to represent the workers.

  • And even if unions are not going

  • to be the solution in the future,

  • that doesn't mean that there isn't gonna be

  • some other institution that needs to be created

  • and that's why I think actually the talk is important,

  • at least talking about these issues.

  • The new research in economics is just that, it's new.

  • We were not talking about these things five years ago

  • and about this severe anticompetitive nature

  • of some corporations.

  • And then what are the solutions to those.

  • I think we're in unchartered territory,

  • not just because of technology but because

  • of the structure of capitalism and the need

  • to create new institutions that are not gonna be

  • like the old institutions necessarily.

  • We don't know what those are gonna look like yet.

  • - But let's say you could unrig the market,

  • you could have a properly competitive market,

  • move more from crony capitalism

  • to a healthier form of capitalism

  • which there are countries that are doing it

  • in a healthier way.

  • Not everywhere do you get such kind of political power

  • being brought about in the economy.

  • Let's say you could use a carbon tax

  • and other incentives through the market

  • to actually just politically embed into the market

  • action on climate change,

  • that might be enough is what I'm hearing

  • but I'm not hearing from you Andrew.

  • What I'm hearing is that even if you diddle,

  • and I'm well aware how utopian that is,

  • you're saying no no no 'cause the tax coming,

  • the AI is coming and that's gonna change everything.

  • - Yeah, there are two parallel crisis

  • that are working in tandem.

  • One is climate change,

  • two is the fourth industrial revolution

  • that we're in the midst of the greatest economic

  • and technological transformation in human history.

  • And Donald Trump is a symptom of this transformation.

  • The driving force behind his victory in 2016

  • was that we'd automated away four million manufacturing jobs

  • in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa

  • and now we're going to do the same thing

  • to millions of retail jobs, call center jobs,

  • fast food jobs, truck driving jobs as well as,

  • I was an unhappy corporate attorney for five months

  • and I can guarantee you can automate that job.

  • So we have these two crises that are unfolding in tandem

  • and we are completely ill prepared for either of them

  • so that the best path forward is

  • to try and humanize our economy.

  • And by this what I mean is GDP is a measurement

  • we made up almost 100 years ago

  • and even the inventors had three things.

  • One, this is a terrible measurement for national well-being

  • and we should not use it as that.

  • Two, we should include parenthood

  • and motherhood in the number because they are so important

  • and three, we shouldn't include military defense spending

  • because it has no economic value.

  • And of course we ignored all three of those things

  • and now we're riding GDP off a cliff.

  • And so what we should do is update our very measurements

  • so that something like environmental quality,

  • mental health, childhood success rates,

  • life expectancy, proportion of elderly

  • who can retire in quality circumstances.

  • We have numbers for these things.

  • We can turn them into the new GDP and then we can channel

  • our market forces to try and improve our lives

  • because the market is doing what it's designed to do.

  • The problem is that capital efficiency

  • and human well-being are diverging.

  • So what you have to do is you have

  • to actually make the measurements, human well-being itself

  • and then have that be the measurement of progress.

  • That is our best path forward and

  • that actually gives us a chance

  • to try and make progress on climate change

  • and the automation of jobs simultaneously

  • in the timeframe we have.

  • - So I just wanna move on to what the state

  • or the collective owes the citizen, let's go back to that.

  • If we think that there's some social insurance system

  • and the people should be in some way deserving of that

  • because it strikes me that the US does pretty well

  • insuring some people and social security system

  • full of it's faults has massively reduced

  • pension and poverty, Medicare is there et cetera

  • but other people really, under insured children I would say,

  • especially there is no social insurance.

  • So it shows that it can be done,

  • that the collective world can be there.

  • The problem is the kind of politics of it.

  • And I'm thinking particularly here about

  • something like a universal basic income

  • which obviously you've argued for here Andrew

  • and I really wanna, I'm gonna come

  • to you last on this again Andrew

  • 'cause I just wanna hear from political scientists.

  • What do we know about attitudes

  • towards different kinds of transfer payments

  • or different kinds of public goods

  • to different kinds of people

  • and what light would that throw on attitudes towards

  • and the successful politicization of something like a UBI.

  • Do you wanna go first Leslie?

  • - Sure.

  • Well, actually Vanessa said it earlier.

  • Most of these policies are hugely popular.

  • The fact that they're not enacted is not the fault

  • of a public that is rejecting the sort of social classic,

  • social democratic welfare state.

  • In fact, and I know Vanessa has done some research on that,

  • when you look at the state level

  • you do see initiatives to raise taxes

  • particularly targeted taxes on high income households

  • in order to do a few very popular things,

  • programs that actually have been really cut

  • by the fiscal austerity in states.

  • First and foremost, education spending, hugely popular

  • and it also is something that supports jobs

  • because teachers are employed through those dollars

  • but also funding healthcare at the local level

  • and the third thing that's often

  • very popular is public safety.

  • Also funding gets cut for fire and police.

  • These are the sorts of things where

  • if you look at it at the local level,

  • they work in a sense because people can see the benefits

  • that they're gonna receive at the local level.

  • They can see a targeted tax that says

  • these revenues are gonna go to these very popular programs.

  • That's accountability, it's transparency of benefits.

  • At the federal level we lose that transparency.

  • - Unless it was straight cash

  • in which case it's actually very transparent.

  • - Which we're gonna get to absolutely.

  • But Vanessa you've done a lot of work in this field

  • so I'm not gonna try and do justice to it

  • but I do think there's a sense anyway

  • that certain kinds of transfer payments

  • seem more politically sellable than others

  • depending on who they go to and in what circumstances.

  • - That's right, and this sort of gets back

  • to the point I was making earlier.

  • One of the challenges of providing benefits to poor people

  • is that traditionally, certain groups of Americans,

  • particularly people of color have been seeing

  • these undeserving people who do not work hard enough

  • and therefore why would we be giving them money.

  • And so there's a great classic book called

  • 'Why Americans Hate Welfare' and it demonstrates

  • that when welfare became a program that was racialized,

  • that is to say it was perceived

  • to be received by African Americans,

  • popular opinion turned against the program.

  • And I think that that is a legacy

  • that we have been dealing with

  • from the beginning in this country,

  • it's a legacy we will continue to have to deal with

  • but I think that there is nothing more important

  • than dealing with it and in particular I think

  • what is vitally important,

  • especially as the country's demography has changed,

  • mathematically it's easier to make this change.

  • We need to think about what we provide our citizens.

  • I wanna answer the question you asked

  • about what the state should give to citizens.

  • We need to think about programs,

  • not about whether someone might become dependent upon them

  • but what programs can we provide to citizens

  • to make them independent?

  • And this is a very old republican idea,

  • that in order to be an effective citizen,

  • you had to be independent, economically independent.

  • If you had a boss who could tell you you had a vote

  • back then when there wasn't a secret ballot,

  • that was a danger to democracy.

  • And so many of the founders decided that what we should do

  • is we disenfranchise the poor.

  • The alternative approach, which I think is a better one,

  • might be to make sure that no one's poor.

  • And so I think that for me telling the story

  • of why we need to provide for every American

  • in terms of making sure that everyone can be a citizen

  • is the story that I would personally want to tell.

  • - But I think most people might react to that

  • by saying the way you become independent is through skills,

  • education, all of those services you just talked about

  • and you're gonna correct if I'm wrong about this,

  • a lot of people would say giving someone a check

  • doesn't make them independent,

  • you've just argued that it does

  • but I'm not sure that that's the general view.

  • (audience laughing)

  • - So the conventional recipe is education and retraining

  • but when you dig in the success rates

  • of federally funded retraining programs

  • for, let's call them, manufacturing workers in the mid west

  • have a success rate of between zero and 15%.

  • They essentially do not work.

  • And if you look at the education,

  • about 33% of Americans graduate from college.

  • So if you subsidize that further,

  • you're essentially subsidizing

  • the top third of your population.

  • And right now the underemployment rate

  • for recent college graduates or the proportion

  • that are doing a job that does not require a college degree

  • is between 40 and 44%.

  • So it's not like if someone graduates from college

  • there's this college appropriate job waiting for them.

  • 94% of the new jobs that are being created

  • in the last number of years have been

  • at a temporary gig or contractor jobs

  • that don't have meaningful benefits hence this entire panel

  • which is that capitalism is not working.

  • So the great thing is that if you were to, let's say,

  • issue a freedom dividend

  • of $1000 per American adult per month

  • then that would shore up many of the problems,

  • it would create over two million jobs,

  • it would start recognizing and rewarding women

  • for their vital and unrecognized and uncompensated work

  • that we all know women do more of

  • in our homes and communities,

  • it would also help marginalized communities

  • and people of color disproportionately

  • because they have lower access

  • to wealth and education opportunity.

  • And the great thing is

  • this would become universally popular.

  • There's one state that's had a dividend for almost 40 years

  • and that state's Alaska where everyone in Alaska

  • gets between one and $2000 a year, no questions asked.

  • And Alaska is a deep red conservative state,

  • it was passed by a republican governor.

  • This is not necessarily left or right, it's forward.

  • Martin Luther King championed this,

  • Milton Friedman championed this,

  • Thomas Paine championed this,

  • Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase

  • just came out last month and said America is having

  • a national emergency in terms of the failure

  • of our capitalist system

  • and we should declare a negative income tax.

  • You know what that is?

  • It's an income floor where just everyone gets

  • a certain amount of cash if you're below a certain level.

  • So we need to get with a program, own the fact

  • that our economy has evolved in fundamental ways,

  • get the public will to match up to the policy

  • and the only way to do that is just send a message

  • all the way to the top because unfortunately

  • most of our legislators are held captive

  • by corporate interest and there's a very limited way

  • to make the feedback mechanism of democracy work.

  • - Is there a big difference though between one

  • or 2000 a year in a state that had a natural resource

  • that you could kind of argue was just chance

  • and so we should all benefit from it

  • than 12000 a year out of general federal spending?

  • Just in terms of how it's perceived.

  • I'm not sure that the analogy holds up

  • between a pretty small dividend payment

  • based on a natural resource and a much bigger one based on.

  • - Well, the argument that one could easily make

  • is that technology is the oil of the 21st century

  • and that we are the owners and stakeholders of the society

  • and as the incredible wealth that is being produced in part

  • by our own information, then we deserve a dividend

  • and that's an argument I will be very glad to take

  • to the American people.

  • - And then we'll see how the tech companies

  • feel about having drilling rigs arrive

  • to extract all the money which is in my mind now

  • to go just suck it now.

  • - I'm friends with dozens, hundreds of the technologists

  • and some of them don't like this projection.

  • But if you go to them and say

  • hey you're automating away the jobs is inequality

  • just completely rampant and out of control,

  • half of them will say yes.

  • - Exactly, it depends what the alternative is, isn't it?

  • And if you'll turn just to continue

  • living in a gilded age, wonderful.

  • - It's worse because what you say to them is like

  • is life better inside the bunker or outside the bunker

  • and half of them own bunkers and they've tested them out

  • and they've decided the sunshine is better.

  • - They do.

  • I'm gonna give applaud to Heather Boushey's piece

  • in our series we just republished at Brookings

  • which argues for a more inclusive definition of GDP

  • including a distribution analysis

  • which actually the bureau of labor statistics are working on

  • but then I'll open this up.

  • Let's get some questions from the audience.

  • There are microphones at the front,

  • I think only at the front so sprint to the microphone.

  • Please identify yourself and keep your question short

  • and please we do want, please make it a question

  • or at least have a slightly rising tone

  • in your voice towards the end.

  • Would you agree that?

  • All right, start there, gentleman there.

  • - [Man] The first question, can you hear me?

  • Is that a question?

  • - Yeah, but get a bit closer,

  • everyone needs to get close to the microphone,

  • yeah, lift up.

  • - [Man] I wonder if there's an obstacle to all of this,

  • it sort of makes this conversation's mood

  • if that obstacle as it is is united.

  • Is there any possibility of progress

  • of challenging the interest you were just discussing.

  • I know Andrew you're a constitutional member to overturn it

  • but is there anything we can do,

  • I'm sorry, that's a stupid question.

  • Is this just an impediment that's not gonna go away

  • unless there's something like constitutional amendment?

  • - [Richard] The game's just gonna be rigged

  • unless that gets out.

  • What I'm gonna do is take two or three if that's okay people

  • and then redistribute them.

  • Yeah, the lady right behind you.

  • - [Martha] Thank you, my name is Martha

  • and this question is mostly for Leslie.

  • I have noticed a kind of a revolving door,

  • politicians and rich people

  • from different sorts of life are the same.

  • So what would be the point

  • of changing the political structure

  • if the people who make policies are the same

  • as the ones that benefit from the policies they make

  • and if anybody else wants to contribute

  • and that would be great.

  • Thank you.

  • - [Richard] It could be a different bunch

  • of rich people making policy basically.

  • Okay, the gentleman over here on the right.

  • - [Man] I enjoyed this series on this year a few months ago

  • when a number of economists

  • including Paul Krugman was speaking

  • and the area that they spoke about,

  • one of them was guaranteed income

  • and the other was the idea that

  • automation was taking away jobs.

  • And it was unanimous among the economists.

  • - [Richard] I don't believe it.

  • - [Man] Yeah but it was unanimous so they said that,

  • well, I think it was overblown that technology

  • was taking away jobs because 120 years ago,

  • 80% of the people lived on farms,

  • now it's 3% work on farms

  • and we have a 3.6% unemployment rate.

  • So where do those other people go?

  • They somehow got absorbed.

  • The other thing on guaranteed income they said well,

  • they said giving people money, why not just hire them

  • to do the things that we need.

  • We have have plenty of infrastructure.

  • - A guaranteed job rather than guaranteed income.

  • That's the lively debate in policies focus right now.

  • So thank you.

  • I'm gonna come back to the panel.

  • So we've got, this is all just smoke until we change

  • the way that financing happens.

  • We're just gonna, the problems rich people say in policy

  • is not gonna go away and then this time,

  • is it really different and I'd say the gentleman

  • has properly, I'd say, summarized the medium position

  • of economic thinking right now which is that

  • we just don't know yet whether

  • it's really gonna be different and that

  • we've always had this fear that technology

  • is about to wipe out all the jobs

  • and not enough evidence yet to suggest

  • that this time really is any different,

  • certainly not to do anything as radical as that.

  • And if we were rather than just to give them a check,

  • give them a job.

  • Leslie, don't feel like you have to take all three.

  • Just pick and choose.

  • - I'll just say very simply.

  • We do know that the ground game,

  • person to person contact

  • in campaigns makes a huge difference.

  • We know that very few people turn out at local elections.

  • This is doable.

  • We know that it's doable.

  • There's a lot of political science research

  • that talks about how to launch a successful campaign

  • without a lot of money.

  • So I am optimistic actually, I think it's possible.

  • I think it's possible.

  • Pardon me.

  • - [Richard] We need one optimist on the panel.

  • Okay, Andrew.

  • - Oh well, we're testing it our right now.

  • It's actually easier to pass the democracy dollars

  • and they can give us all $100 to help balance out

  • the lobbyist and a constitutional amendment and to fight it.

  • But to the concerns about the fact that

  • we're not sure about what's happening to the jobs.

  • I wrote a book on this subject,

  • I've looked at the economic underpinnings.

  • The labor force participation right now in the US is 63%

  • which is close to a multidecade law

  • in the same levels as Costa Rica and Ecuador.

  • And this is your tad of an expansion.

  • Of the four million manufacturing workers

  • that lost their jobs in the midwest, I studied economics.

  • Who here studied economics?

  • Let's try this.

  • What did our macroeconomics text book would happen

  • to those four million workers after they lost their jobs?

  • - [Man] They get new ones.

  • - They get new ones, retrained, reskilled,

  • higher productivity, economy grows, all is well.

  • So what actually happened

  • to the four million manufacturing workers in the mid west?

  • Almost half of them left the workforce

  • and never worked again and of that half have disability

  • and then you saw surges in suicides

  • and drug overdoses and Trump voting.

  • None of that was in my economics textbook.

  • So we need to actually get our heads off the textbook

  • and go to communities and go on the ground.

  • Then you get a sense of reality.

  • So if someone talks about the headline unemployment rate,

  • they're just ignoring

  • the depressed labor force participation,

  • the lack of affordability,

  • the underemployment that's ripping through the economy.

  • - [Richard] Okay, Vanessa.

  • - I will just say a couple of quick things.

  • First of all, in terms of citizens united,

  • I think it is correct to imagine that the supreme court

  • is going to be an issue for any of a number

  • of progressive reforms as it long has been.

  • On the question of the job guarantee,

  • I think that it's important to remember

  • that there is no contradiction

  • between a job's guarantee and UBI

  • but they could happen simultaneously there or not

  • in any way at odds in terms of policies.

  • The last thing I'd say is that

  • it is possible the technology will eliminate jobs,

  • it does not seem obvious to me

  • that technology will innovate work

  • because for it to eliminate work you'd have

  • to believe all the children were educated,

  • all the old people were cared for,

  • all the parks were clean, all the roads had potholes filled

  • and I don't think we're anywhere near running out of work.

  • So the question is to how to convert work into jobs.

  • And I think that's a third piece of the puzzle.

  • - [Richard] Great, we're gonna take some more questions.

  • The gentleman there.

  • Let's do the same again, I'll do a round of three.

  • - [Man] I appreciate Andrew's point on

  • what's in the textbook and what's not in the textbook,

  • that comes up very often in the classroom,

  • what we expect it to come from international trade

  • it was not what actually happened.

  • To that point thought, the textbook does bring up

  • the movement of capital and labor across borders

  • and I wonder, from your perspectives,

  • how much of the issue that we're dealing with today

  • is because we've globalized capital,

  • we've allowed businesses to go across borders

  • and to expand the region in that sense

  • but we haven't necessarily applied

  • the level of globalization to citizenship

  • where you can just move between countries

  • when work is not available and when you're not trained

  • for the work that is available within your borders.

  • So I know it doesn't necessarily address all the automation

  • and questions that come up as well

  • but I wonder how much of a role that globalization make.

  • - [Richard] I'm very glad you asked the question

  • because free trade is obviously a very big issue right now

  • and it was one of the things

  • that I think was taken for granted in the previous consensus

  • was that it was gonna be good,

  • we're gonna move together

  • and now that has been seriously threatened.

  • Yeah, gentlemen.

  • - [Man] Yeah, listen, I moved to a small town

  • in Fishkill, New York and it was a perfectly

  • well run little town.

  • We had grocers,

  • we had butchers, you had

  • whatever and so forth.

  • Then there was an attempt and it was successful

  • to have Walmart come into the town.

  • Here's the cracks which I think you need to address,

  • which I think you need a social psychologist here.

  • The whole town voted to have Walmart come in

  • and what happened as a result of that

  • the butcher went out, the grocer out,

  • the hardware store went out and so forth.

  • And all that panacea of voting for a big corporation,

  • it was terrible.

  • Well, they got jobs at Walmart but they made them poor.

  • Those jobs made them poor whereas before

  • you had a perfectly functioning town

  • where the butcher paid the grocer.

  • - [Richard] Is there a question?

  • - [Man] Yes, why is there no social psychologist on here,

  • in this panel?

  • - [Richard] All right that's a fair question.

  • - [Man] And also I want to have you address consumerism.

  • - [Richard] Consumerism, okay.

  • - [Man] And the flow of money from a little community

  • into overseas banks.

  • - Thank you for that.

  • It's fascinating that they voted for it.

  • That's democracy in action.

  • So it's a good tension that you've identified that.

  • And the gentleman here.

  • - [Ray] I'm Ray and I almost feeling like

  • I'm hearing the answer that I'm aware of

  • which is a gentleman who believed in free trade,

  • no taxation but sharing the natural resource dividend

  • and the natural resource exist in every square inch

  • of this country, not just in Alaska.

  • The planet is the natural resource and could pay

  • for all these problems and send everybody a check

  • for tens of thousands a year, their share

  • of the natural resource dividend for being alive.

  • Human beings have a right to live,

  • human beings require natural resources to live,

  • human beings have a right to natural resources.

  • That was Henry George's syllogism.

  • He got twice as many votes as Theodore Roosevelt.

  • - But he was gonna do it through land tax, right?

  • - [Ray] According to Joseph's legalist and others, yes,

  • land rent, in other words paying rent

  • for something you did not create

  • that if it ever belonged to anybody,

  • it was stolen to begin with

  • but the Indians didn't claim ownership of the land,

  • they didn't believe you could own the land.

  • - So there's something here which is,

  • I think is quite profound which is

  • the very idea of private property.

  • So now we're getting some really good socialist thinking

  • and I do not mean that in a disparaging way.

  • This is actually properties theft.

  • Very idea of private property is

  • at the heart of a market economy

  • and that's absolutely true in US

  • it's why Henry George was not very popular in the US,

  • he was much more popular in Europe

  • where the ideas of land taxation

  • were taken much more seriously.

  • But we should be thinking much more radically.

  • Please feel free to come around that if you like.

  • The fact that a small town voted for Walmart

  • and then didn't like the results.

  • I'm not quite sure or you don't think the results were good.

  • Maybe people didn't know what they were voting for et cetera

  • but that seems like a really good test case

  • of allowing people to decide whether they want a Walmart

  • or they want lovely butchers et cetera

  • and then the trade point which is are we moving away

  • from free trade and how do we feel about free trade anyway

  • and how the politics of free trade changing too

  • which I might ask Vanessa to come around to

  • but let's start with you Andrew this time.

  • - According to the studies I saw

  • automation is a much bigger driver of job loss

  • and maybe this community is in the globalization,

  • the ratio, something like 75, 25 or 80/20

  • in the studies that I saw.

  • So globalization is a big issue.

  • One of the things that we as a society have to,

  • in my opinion, correct is that it's not immigrants

  • that are driving economic dislocations,

  • it's a transforming economy.

  • And that if you go to an Amazon fulfillment warehouse,

  • it is not wall to wall immigrants,

  • it's wall to wall machines.

  • And so that is the real driver of the anxiety

  • and stress that many Americans are feeling.

  • And unfortunately immigrants have been scapegoatted

  • and that's one aspect of globalization

  • that I think America's going to have to grapple with

  • over the next number of years.

  • - [Richard] It's fascinating people now

  • are really freaking out by the falling birth rate

  • 'cause the labor force but

  • you can solve that with immigrations.

  • So Leslie.

  • - I think that the issues of sort of local politics,

  • one question I would have is

  • how many people voted for Amazon?

  • Of course there have been a number of movements,

  • did I say Amazon?

  • I meant Walmart.

  • There have been a number of movements against Walmart.

  • Generally they've occurred in places

  • where there are other jobs, larger cities

  • or suburban areas that I know of.

  • But again, these are tough issues to tackle

  • in a relatively depressed area.

  • It's not depressed.

  • It's difficult, as Richard said,

  • at one point it's difficult to regulate one company.

  • You mean to take regulation throughout the country

  • and it's same with wages.

  • You need to take wages out of competition

  • throughout the country so that corporations can't move

  • from one place to another.

  • Same with international trade.

  • International institutions and agencies need to tackle

  • these kinds of problems about labor standards, about wages

  • and about the environment.

  • These are the kinds of institutions

  • that will solve these problems internationally,

  • nationally and it is a tall order.

  • I'm not saying that it's not incredibly challenging

  • to do these things but that's what we need to do

  • if those problems are gonna be solved.

  • - We don't know that Walmart had a budget

  • of millions of dollars to convince towns

  • that it was a good idea to bring them in there.

  • And that the butcher and the baker had a budget of zero.

  • And so that town council had this really fancy document

  • showing them that Walmart's gonna be great

  • and there was no countervailing sense of documents,

  • the local businesses were outgunned

  • and even if the community, after the facts said,

  • you know what, this is a terrible idea.

  • I really miss my main street.

  • You can't undo that decision.

  • You can't all of a sudden be like hey,

  • Walmart, turns out we made a mistake.

  • So this is unfolding in communities around the country.

  • Like the companies have all of the materials

  • and the resources and the people have none.

  • - And the capacity

  • to make the different trade-offs as well.

  • Fighting gets market logic,

  • I think is what we're kind of hearing a lot of

  • on the panel so far that other kinds of social value,

  • other kinds of ways to job success

  • but these are kind of hard facts.

  • I wanna let Vanessa in now.

  • - Yeah, I think that you're exactly right to imagine

  • that we need to have a different narrative

  • of how the economy works because the one that

  • has been sort of sipped in to popular consciousness

  • about as if corporations just have jobs sitting on the shelf

  • and if you're nice to them they'll release those jobs

  • into the wild which is total nonsense.

  • I bet that's the image that

  • I think operates in people's minds

  • and it's a real problem.

  • I think it was worth seeing a little bit more

  • in the question of immigration which came up

  • in passing on the trade question which is

  • at the end of the day people are not a box of widgets

  • that you can just ship to another country.

  • People live in communities

  • and it's hard to uproot themselves.

  • So I think that we can't imagine that labor can ever flow

  • the way that imaginary dollars can fly over the internet

  • and that's something that creates a power imbalance.

  • The other thing I'll say is that when we're thinking

  • about support for a social safety net,

  • in the United States, that has been undermined

  • by racism for centuries.

  • In Europe it has, in recent decades

  • been substantially undermined by antiimmigrant sentiment

  • in a very similar way and I think that we're obviously

  • also seeing that here as well.

  • So I think that's a third piece of the puzzle

  • that's really challenging in addition

  • to whether there can be the right jobs

  • and whether there can be, small town,

  • they're ever gonna have the power to deal with corporations.

  • The capacity of people to resist economic power

  • is related to their sense of solidarity with one another

  • and all too often immigration,

  • people don't feel the same solidarity with new immigrants.

  • - It's interesting to see that any economics place

  • is now making a real resurgence,

  • the idea that places matter wasn't something

  • that traditional economics took very seriously.

  • The idea was you just move.

  • Basically you're just a unit of human capital, you can move

  • and that's been a real shift I think

  • just in the last few years.

  • - Yeah, I think economists may have encountered

  • a sociologist at some point and learned of the subject.

  • - And sociologists got the better

  • of them in many of these areas.

  • So I'm basically, pretty much out of time.

  • I'm gonna get into trouble if I take

  • another couple of questions so I'm just gonna risk it.

  • But, in exchange you gotta keep them super short.

  • I'm gonna cut you off after the 30 seconds.

  • I'll do a lighting round, okay?

  • You and then you, really short.

  • - [Chirag] Very short, I'm Chirag.

  • The statistic that you mentioned about

  • life expectancy going down is really troubling

  • and it's very new but as a biotechnologist,

  • even by the shortest of estimates it looks like overall

  • human longevity for some people can be extended

  • maybe modestly 150 years.

  • Certainly about a more, a non-reasonable estimate

  • which right now seem crazy or 200, 300 years.

  • So if people can live this long,

  • I'm almost 50 and I got tests for.

  • - But you do look very good.

  • (audience laughing)

  • - [Chirag] It's because of automation so I just wanna know.

  • - All right, is there a question there?

  • Obviously we're admiring you but what's the...

  • - [Chirag] Can capitalism help us

  • the same way information technology

  • made people addicted to information?

  • - Great, the lady here, really short.

  • - [Woman] I understood Vanessa to say.

  • - Can you go to the microphone.

  • - [Woman] Microphone, microphone microphone, okay.

  • I understood Vanessa to say that politicians believe

  • they can't interfere in the economy

  • and I wasn't sure what you meant by that.

  • Did you men that politicians think it's inappropriate

  • for them that they don't have a method of interfering,

  • that they fear it would be ineffectual?

  • Exactly what did you mean, it's fascinating.

  • - Well, I'm going to ask Vanessa

  • but I guess it means is that politicians treat

  • market economies as if some naturally preexisting thing

  • that you can't, there's just something magical about it

  • that you can't mess with rather

  • than a deeply political institution

  • that they can mess with pretty seriously.

  • Why don't you take that directly Vanessa

  • and then we'll come back to the...

  • - I'm gonna say two things.

  • One, a point I meant to make earlier

  • which is that legislators all have a very bad sense

  • of the political opinions of their constituents

  • and there's more and more research on this

  • so to some extent legislators are not acting

  • in the public interest in part because they misperceive

  • what the public interest is

  • but I think Leslie made that point.

  • I think you are the one who was talking about

  • the capacity to intervene in the economy.

  • - I think you both made the point in different ways.

  • - I think you summarized it exactly.

  • It's the power of the economy,

  • what we were talking about earlier

  • that jobs are supreme and...

  • - [Woman] It's kind of untouchable.

  • - In a very minimalist kind of way.

  • It's sort of a lack of political imagination

  • about the future I would argue

  • and how we control the transformations

  • that we're undergoing in the economy.

  • How we again politically control those transformations.

  • - So I'm gonna ask you each to.

  • I'm gonna throw in my own question.

  • This will be the final final round.

  • The point about life expectancy allows me

  • to kind of point out that whilst average life expectancy

  • might be dropping slightly is because inequality

  • in life expectancy is growing.

  • The life expectancy among those who are at the top

  • of the income distribution,

  • I'm not suggesting they're gonna live to be 200

  • although you clearly will.

  • (audience laughing)

  • But it's the inequality in life expectancy

  • which is reflective of all the other deep inequalities.

  • That's one of those occasions where the average

  • is really dangerously misleading in some ways

  • 'cause it's disguising this huge inequality.

  • Andrew, I'm gonna give you the last word Andrew

  • but I just wanted to invite all three of you.

  • I'll start with you Vanessa.

  • Some of this feels to me as if

  • people believe and I'm gonna say I believe it

  • if it helps with the argument

  • but there's an individualistic ethos in America,

  • it's in the DNA that you do make it on your own,

  • you're a mistress or master of your own destiny,

  • that government overreach gets in the way

  • and everybody can make it and every Americans,

  • however poor, sees themselves as what someone described

  • as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

  • And if everybody sees themselves

  • as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire and you know what

  • in America you can make it and we're on our own

  • and it's a meritocracy at the end of it.

  • Is that ethos as deeply rooted as I think it is

  • because if it is then maybe all of this is for know anyway.

  • And if not, why do we keep getting the outcomes that we get.

  • Why do we still keep talking about ourselves that way?

  • Vanessa and then I go to you.

  • - So classically, people would say

  • that Americans are theoretical conservatives,

  • they say like like small from an operational liberalist

  • which just means if you ask them about any major thing

  • government does like education, healthcare,

  • I think we should be spending more on it.

  • So no, I don't think Americans

  • are components of government at all

  • because they have so consistently said

  • that they would like the government to be doing more

  • when it comes to looking after the American people

  • where I think you'll find the tradition

  • of antitax sentiment in the United States

  • actually stems from slavery.

  • But if you look at, for instance

  • the parts of the constitution that make it very difficult

  • for the federal government to tax, those are intended,

  • one of them is embedded in the 3/5 clause.

  • They are intended to protect a certain kind of property

  • and to maintain a certain kind of racial divide

  • that would prevent solidarity between working people

  • but I think that idea that Americans

  • insist upon doing it on their own

  • is just not backed by the data.

  • - Leslie, did you wanna add anything?

  • - The only thing I would add to that

  • if that if there is anything to it

  • and I think it's very relevant to something like the UBI

  • is that there is some value to work

  • and some kind of fundamental value to work.

  • I don't think that's particularly American by the way

  • it just happens to be part of the political environment

  • here in this part of our history as well.

  • We don't have a history part,

  • probably because of racial inequality,

  • we don't have a history of a strong welfare state.

  • It's not embedded in our culture.

  • I don't think it's inherent in any way

  • and also the US had wild economic growth

  • in the post World War II period that was widely shared.

  • So work was, I mentioned this in my opening statements,

  • the civil rights movement was about economic inclusion.

  • It was about inclusion in the economy

  • to the valuable work and employment.

  • It wasn't about extending welfare benefits

  • although that was important too.

  • - I think it's important and I do agree with that

  • but also think Vanessa's point is gonna be a kind of

  • a mythical thing about US individualism.

  • And I'm just thinking about UBI in that context.

  • On the one hand it seems like this incredible piece

  • of social insurance, very expensive checks being cut

  • for 12000 to everybody.

  • On the other hand it's incredibly individualistic

  • because it gets you away from sort of

  • more paternalistic forms of welfare and it just says

  • here's the money and then how you then decide to top it up

  • or do it is kind of up to you.

  • So I can't figure out whether UBI

  • is actually quite an individualistic policy

  • or whether it's a deeply collectivist one.

  • You know.

  • - The one reason why it has such universal appeal

  • is that libertarians love it

  • because they like as long as

  • the government's not making my decisions.

  • I like economic autonomy and freedom.

  • Liberals and progressives and democrats like it

  • because they know it'd mean more money

  • in the hands of children and families,

  • it would mean better health, education outcomes,

  • mental health, lower stress levels.

  • It would empower millions of American women

  • who are right now in exploitative or abusive jobs

  • or relationships to actually improve their lives

  • and the democratic party came out

  • to talk about empowering women or do something about it

  • and I believe we should do something about it.

  • But I wanna look around this room and say

  • there are a couple of a hundred of you here tonight

  • and I have a feeling you're all here

  • because you sense that things are trending

  • in a very negative direction,

  • like no one saw this topic and was like,

  • "Oh, things are fantastic.

  • "I suppose I will come here about how great they are."

  • Like you sense that there's a real ill afflicting

  • our body politic for sure and our economy

  • and it is becoming increasingly punitive and inhuman

  • and we're not sure what to do about it.

  • But the people in this room,

  • it's actually a very high level commitment

  • that you can I'm gonna spend a couple of hours

  • and learn about this.

  • We need to do something about is as fast as possible

  • for the sake of our children, our grandchildren

  • and leave the society that we're still proud of to them

  • because we do not have limitless time,

  • and we know what must be done.

  • The time talk is well past and now we must act.

  • (audience applauding)

  • - Thank you.

  • I'd just like to thank all of you for coming,

  • I encourage you to check out the work of The Stone Center

  • here at The City University of New York,

  • check out the 'Broken Capitalism' series

  • of The Guardian and the work of all the scholars

  • that you've heard from tonight.

  • Please join me in thanking our distinguished panel.

  • (audience applauding)

- Good evening.

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資本主義と民主主義。彼らは共存できるか? (Capitalism and Democracy: Can They Coexist?)

  • 130 7
    王惟惟 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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