the right now i think by every market indicator, the video is robustly competitive good post over on the setup time commissioner mcdowell. senator snowe and one are introduced to the fcc. do you support that? >> guest: how could i be against pretty more expertise to the fcc? especially because mark warner is introducing the bill. i think that's a terrific thing and we do need to make sure that we have worked technical ideas at the fcc. a lot of our engineers on staff, some of the best and brightest in the world, but some of them are reaching retirement age and we need to be able to compete with the private sector to attract folks to come to the commission. if anyone is out there watching, please send in your resume to the fcc. we need you to donate a few years of her time to public service.

it's very important. >> host: what is the role of stuart benjamin? >> guest: i've known him for a number of years and he talked to university. he was our very first scholar in residence. i let him speak for himself as his actual role. but he is there anything to help us be a liaison between the commission in the academic community at a minimum. he is an expert on first amendment law noticed terrific to have him onboard. he is a great guy. >> host: and a final question from cecilia kang. >> you'll be at cbs later this week. what will you be looking at and what -- how were you be viewed in what you see on the floor to policy lines? >> guest: i'd like to go to the consumer electronics show because it gives a very efficient one-stop shopping for what's coming over with her ricin for consumers in the next year or two. and they'll be looking to whatever they present to me. so there's always a surprise there.

so probably a week from now we should be talking about what i was most surprised about. but i think what'll be interesting to see is what sort of typologies are there to bring more online video content from the internet to your tv set, not just your computer screen but your tv screen. what we do to make that easier for consumers. there are a lot of companies out there trying to make that happen. and also, what are some of the new wireless devices out there, what is the latest technology that folks are using and how a suspect are being used and what do we foresee? so it's a very efficient way to learn a lot. >> host: as always, we appreciate youin communicators." robert mcdowell of the fcc, cecilia kang of the "washington post." >> guest: thank you. >> thank you. ricrd

trumka said today that the illustration should crack down on business executives in light of new reports that some wall street bonuses could be in the millions of dollars. speaking at the national club. he also said that democrats should not take union support for granted good this is an

hour. >> good afternoon. welcome to the national press club for speakers luncheon. my name is donna leinwand and president of the national press club and a reporter for u.s.a. today. where the world's leading professional organization for journalists and we are committed to a future of journalism by providing informative programming and journalism education and fostering a free press worldwide here it are more information about the national press club, please visit our website at www.press.org. on behalf of our 3500 members worldwide i'd like to welcome our speaker and our guests in the audience today. i'd also like to welcome those of you who are watching us on c-span. we're looking forward to today's speech and afterwards i'll ask as many questions from the audience as time permits. please hold your applause during the speech so that we have time for as many questions as possible. for those in our broadcast audience, i'd like to explain that if you hear applause and

maybe from the guests and members of the general public to attend our luncheon and not necessarily from the working press. i'd now like to introduce our head table gasped and asked them to stand briefly when their names are called. from your rights, sheila cherry of dna, a former president of the national press club. todd gilman of the "dallas morning news." holly rosenkrantz, reporter for bloomberg news. with schuyler, secretary treasurer of the afl-cio. mark schatz, crane's workforce management. john hiatt, chief of staff for the afl-cio and a guest of our speaker. skipping over the podium, angela keen bloomberg news and chair of the national press club speaker committee. skipping over a speaker for a moment, bob carden and the speakers community member who

organize today's event. thank you very much, bob. arlene holt baker and a guest of our speaker. peter van fleet of ap broadcast. the need a nod, chief research analyst in the office of investment for the afl-cio. and finally, a roderigo valderrama a freelance op-ed writer. [applause] thirty years ago, working in the coal mines of western oklahoma our guest today didn't envision standing before the national press club at a newly elected president of the afl-cio. richard trumka went to work in the mines for the same reasons most miners do because his father and his grandfather had worked there before him. but trumka along the way worked

through college and law school, joined the labor movement and eventually led the united mineworkers union. as president of the umw way, trumka led the union and one of the most successful strikes in american history i guess the princeton coal company which i'd try to avoid pain into an industrywide health and pension fund. the strike resulted in significant advances in employer employee cooperation and enhanced mineworkers job security pensions and benefits. breaking with decades of tradition, his consistent use of nonviolent civil disobedience led to his receiving the labor responsibility award from the martin luther king jr. center for nonviolent social change in 1990. trumka's of the mineworkers includes passage of the federal coal act that provides guaranteed health care for retired miners and bring in the union back into the afl-cio fold

here he served as secretary treasurer of the afl-cio for 14 years before being elected president in september. last year president obama named mr. trumka to the economic recovery advisory board. in fact, he'll meet with the president later today. please join me in welcoming to the national press club mr. richard trumka. [applause] >> first of all, let me thank you donna for those very kind and generous words. i like to know that i'm delighted to be here at the national press club. i also want to thank the officers of the press club for the invitation to be here with you today, especially due and bob carden speakers chairman committee member who actually arranged this thing. thank you, bob here it ten days

into the decade and one year into the obama administration our nation remains poised between the failed policies of the past in the hopes for a better future. this is a moment that cries out for political courage and were not seen enough of it. i spent the first week of this year traveling on the west coast. in san francisco, i was arrested with low-wage hotel workers fighting to protect their health care and their pension from leveraged buyouts that it gone bad. in los angeles and san diego, i talked with working americans moved to tears by foreclosures and unemployment, by outsourcing and benefit cuts. ever where i went, people said to me, why do so many of the

people we elect the seem to care only about wall street? why he is helping bankers a matter of urgent d., but unemployment is something we just have to live with? why don't we make anything in america anymore? and why is it so hard to pass a health care bill that guarantees americans healthy lives instead of guaranteeing insurance companies healthy profits? as i traveled from city to city, i heard a sense of resignation from middle-class americans. people laid off for the first time in their lives that team, what did i do wrong? i came away shaken by the sense that the very things that make america great are now in danger. what makes us unique among the

nations is this: in america, working people are the middle-class. we built our middle class in the 20th century through hard work, through struggle and visionary political leadership. but a generation of distract this, greed driven economic helices as a voter that progress and now threatens our very identity as a nation. today, on every coast and in between, working women and working men are fighting to join the middle-class and to protect and to rebuild the. we crave political leadership ready to fight for the kind of america that we want to leave to our children and against the forces of greed that progress to this very moment. but instead, we hear resurgence of complacency and political

paralysis. too many people in washington seem to think that now that we've ed out the banks, everything will be okay. in 2010, our elected leaders must choose between continuing the policies of the past or striking out on a new economic course for america. a course that will reverse the damage in trend toward a greater inequality that's crippling our nation. at this moment, the voices of america's working women and men truly must be heard in washington. not the voices of bankers and speculators for whom it always seems to be the best of times, but the voice says of those for whom the new year brings pink slips and givebacks, hollowed

out health care, foreclosures and pension freezes. it's the roll call of an economy that long ago stopped working for most of us. today i want to talk to you about the labor movement's vision for our nation. see working people want an america and an american economy that works for them, that creates good jobs, where wealth is shared fairly and where the economic life of our nation is about solving problems like the threat of climate change rather than creating problems like the foreclosure crisis. we know that growing equality undermines our ability to grow as a nation by squandering the talents of the contributions of our people and consigning entire communities to stagnation and failure.

if we're going to make our vision real, first we must challenge our political leaders, and we must challenge ourselves and we must challenge our movement. workers formed a labor movement as an expression of our lives, a chain of responsibility and solidarity, making millions of people here in america and around the world into agents of social change, able to accomplish much more together than as isolated individuals. that movement gives voice to the hopes and values and interests of working people every single day. but despite our best efforts, we have endured a generation of stagnant wages and collapsed benefits. a generation where the labor movement has been much more about defense than about

offense, where our horizons are shrinking rather than growing. but the future of the labor movement depends on moving forward, on innovating and changing the way that we work, on being open to all working people and giving voice to all workers, even when our laws and our employers seek to divide us from one another. and that is something that we're working on every single day. the afl-cio is building new ways for working people to organize themselves and new models for collect data for bargaining. we have created working america, a 3 million member community-based union growing and working class neighborhoods. this is one of the signal accomplishments of my predecessor, john sweeney, john, i have to tell you i'm very proud and honored to have you

here with us. please stand up here at [applause] we're proud of our alliance with workers centers movement that links units to the afl-cio with hundreds of grassroots workers organization around the country. and were also working with community allies to strengthen the voice and the bargaining power of low-wage workersn los angeles carwashes, some of the worst paid and worse treated workers in this country. next week, afl-cio executive vice president arlene holt baker, who is right over here, will lead the labor movement commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the lunch counter sit in in greensboro, north carolina, continuing the great work that she's done over so many years on behalf of the most

vulnerable in our society. and not far from greensboro, we've been working with unemployed african-american day laborers and their workers center, desperately, desperately trying to keep alive the dream launched in those very sentence. in san diego last week, i did as a pre-apprenticeship or graham, formed by volker label movement to create career path for at-risk youth. in los angeles, i saw a remarkable community-based labor management training program created by the electrical workers that focus on green jobs. see these programs demonstrate the tremendous benefit that are possible when labor and business come together to solve problems jointly. and when i was there, i met with a man who was once homeless. nt with 19 days away from

becoming a journeyman electrician. a young man named nakayah. and he said to me that the union gave me a chance to go from no life to the hope for a middle-class life. i didn't -- it didn't just teach me to get a job. a tummy out to be a man. and then i talked to hotel workers, members of unite here, immigrants on strike to keep them from falling back into poverty and to union members with phd's, fighting to prevent california's budget catastrophe from creator cratering not only their jobs but the education of their state's children. as i did that i thought of my father on strike in the coal fields when i was a boy. and i was reminded of this basic

truth: a job as a good job because workers fight to make it a good job. and it doesn't matter if the job is in a coal mine or in a classroom or in a car wash. and that, my friend, is why unions are needed today, more than ever before. see i grew up in a little town in southwestern pennsylvania and i was surrounded by the legacy of my parents and my grandparents. my grandfather and my father and his brothers and their fellow workers went into the mines that were death traps. to work for wages that weren't enough to buy food and clothes for our families. they and the union they built made those jobs in the middle-class jobs. and when i went into the mine, it was a good job.

the good job and possibilities for me, possibilities that my mother moved heaven and earth to make real, that took me from penn state to law school to this very podium. what our legacy? was the legacy of those of us who are helping the world -- shaping the world our children and our grandchildren will inhabit? is our government laying the foundation that young people need growing? to workplaces offer hope? do they even offer work? are we building a world that we'll be proud to hand over to our children? are the voices of the young, of the future, being heard? in september, i was elected president of the afl-cio, together with secretary-treasurer liz shuler,

who is here with me on the left and executive vice president, arlene holt baker. live is the youngest principal officer in the afl-cio history. [applause] i asked her to lead a program of outreach to young workers as part of the effort, the afl-cio conducted a study of young workers between the ages of eight teams and 34, comparing their economic standing and attitudes and hopes with those of a similar survey that yea ag. the findings were shocking. they revealed the lost decade of young workers in america, lower wages, education deferred. wings were so bad that one in three of these eight teams to 34 -year-olds is currently living at home with their parents

because they can't afford to live alone. now the desperation i heard in this or pay in the voices of the proud hard-working americans fills me with a sense of urgency, and urgency that should be shared right of reebok select it official here in washington and across the country. as a country and of movement, our challenge is to build a new economy that can restore working people expect nations and renew their hopes. if you were laid off because of what wall street do to our economy, it's not your fault. a dead-end job with no benefit is not the best our country can do for its citizens. so what went wrong with our economy? well, you could say it as simple as we built a low-wage, high

consumption economy and try to bridge the contradiction with debt. and there's a lot of truth in that simplicity. but if we are going to understand what is wrong in a way that will help us understand how to fix the amount i think we need a little more detail. see a generation ago, our nation's policymakers embarked on a campaign of radical deregulation and corporate empowerment. one that celebrated private greed over public service. now the afl-cio warned of the dangers of that path, trade policies that rewarded and accelerated outsourcing, financial deregulation designed to promote speculation in the dismantling of our pension and our health care system. we warned that the middle class

could not survive in such an economy, that growing inequality would inevitably shrink the american pie, that we were borrowing from the rest of the world at an unsustainable pace, that bus would follow bubbles and that our country would be worse off in the end. these policies culminated in the worst economic decade in living memory. we suffered a net loss of jobs, the housing market collapsed, real wages fell and more children fell into poverty. and the enormous growth in the inequality gilded mediocre growth overall. now, this is not a portrait of a cyclical recession, but as a nation with are found,

unaddressed, structural economic doldrums on a long-term, downward slide. our structural problems predate the crisis that hit in 2007 and they're not going to go away by themselves in 2010. first, we have under invested in foundations of our economy, including transportation and communications infrastructure that are essential in a middle-class society and day dynamic, competitive high wage economy. but the most important foundation of our economy is education and training. we simply cannot continue to scamp on the quality of education we provide to all, you know, all of our children and expect to lead in the global economy. likewise, we need to provide

opportunities for lifelong skills upgrading to workers, through both private and the public there. second, we have failed over a long period of time to create enough jobs at home to maintain our middle-class. and we've allowed corporate parks to whittle away at workers bargaining power, to undermine the quality of the remaining jobs. finally, the structural absents of good jobs means a shortage of sustainable demand to drive our economy. we want an entirely different kind of economy. let's talk about what we need to do. we must directly and immediately take on what is wrong by creating millions of good jobs now by rebuilding our economic foundation and giving working

people the freed to form unions again and to make all of our jobs good jobs. [applause] we must pass genuine health care reform and we regulate our financial economy, so that the finance is the servant of the real economy and not its master. [applause] so that we have an independent consumer financial protection agency and so that we never again take the public's money and use it to rescue bank executives and stockholders. the head like to commend president obama's leadership in insisting on a viable and strong, independent consumer protection agency, which is crucial to real financial reform. now, the afl-cio leiby

five-point program will create more than 4 million jobs. extending unemployment benefits, including cobra, expanding federal infrastructure and green jobs investments. romantically increasing federal aid to state and local governments facing financial disaster, direct job creation where feasible. and finally, direct funding of t.a.r.p. money to small and medium-sized business if they can't get credit because of the financial crisis. and we need to adopt a tax on financial speculation so that we can fund the jobs after it as the economy recovers. now somebody in washington saying when it comes to jobs, go slow, take half steps. see those voices are harming millions of unemployed americans

in our families. but they're also jeopardizing our economic recovery. ..

we must take action now to restore workers voices in america. the systemic, systematic silencing of american workers by denying our right to form unions is at the heart of the disappearance of good jobs in america. we must pass the employee free choice act so that workers can have the chance to turn that jobs into good jobs, and so we can reduce the inequality which is undermining our prospects of a stable economic growth. [applause] and we have to do that now, not next year, not even this summer, but right now. each of the initiative should be routed in a crucial alliance of the middle class and the poor. but today, as i speak to you,

something different is happening with health care. on the one hand we have the house bill, which asked the small part of our country that prospered in the last decade, the richest of the rich come to pay a bit more in taxes so that most americans can have health insurance. and the house of pull-- rains in the power of health insurers and employers with the employer mandate and a strong public option. thanks to the senate rules, and the appalling irresponsibility of the senate republicans, and the power of the wealth among some democrats, the senate bill instead drives a wedge between the middle class and the poor. the bill rightfully seek to ensure that most americans have

health insurance, but instead of taxing the rich, the senate bill taxes the middle class by taxing workers health plans. not just union members health care plans. in fact, most of the 31 million uninsured or insured employees who will be hit by the excise tax are not union members. the benefits tax in the senate, in the senate bill pitts working americans, who need health care for their families against working americans struggling to keep health care for their families. now, this is a policy designed to benefit elites. in this case, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and irresponsible employers. at the expense of the broader

public. it is the same tragic pattern that got us where we are today, and i can assure you that the labor movement is fighting everything we have got to win health care reform that is worthy of the support of working men and working women. [applause] these great struggles over health care and jobs and the freedom to organize in financial reforms are the first steps. beyond the short-term job crisis, we have to have an agenda for restoring american manufacturing, a combination of their trade and currency policies, worker training, infrastructure investment and regional development till policies targeted to help the economically distressed areas. we cannot be a prosperous

middle-class society in a dynamic global economy without a healthy manufacturing sector. so we must have an agenda to address the daily challenges that workers face on the job, to ensure safety and health workplaces and worker friendly rules. we need all so comprehensive reform of our immigration policy based on shared prosperity and fairness and not cheap labor, and we must take on the retirement crisis. to many employers have replace the system of pensions we used to have with underfunded savings accounts fully exposed-- ex post everything wrong with wall street. today the median balance of 401(k) accounts is only $27,000, nowhere near enough to secure retirement. we need to return to a policy of

employers sharing responsibility for retirement security with employees while also bolstering and strengthening social security. now, president obama campaigned on a platform of boldly taking on these challenges. he spoke often about the need to refound our economy on doing real things rather than dreaming of financial pots of gold. he asked vice president biden to lead the effort, to restore the middle class. for the first time i can recall we have an administration that sis manufacturing, making things here, as central to america's future and speaks clearly about the positive role for workers and their unions in the future. president obama has laid out an aggressive agenda for structural

change and has appointed people like secretary of labor, hilda solis kubli did not vision. of course, president obama inherited a terrible mess from his predecessor, a journey of stolen elections, ruinous tax cuts for the rich, dishonest wars, a financial scandal, government sponsored torture, flooded cities and finally economic collapse. president obama's administration began out of necessity envisioned, with an act of political courage. the enactment of a broad and substantial economic recovery program. despite republican opposition, the stimulus was big enough to make real, positive impact on our economy. saving more creating more than a million jobs already.

but, the job crisis has escalated. the foreclosure crisis continues, and wall street appears to have returned to its old ways. by the way, this is bonus week on wall street. and i urge you to watch how much discipline they show with all the nation watching this week, watch and dma's. see, now more than ever we need the boldness and the clarity that we saw in our president during the campaign in 2008 when he outlined the scope of the economic problems facing our nation unencumbered by the political crosscurrents buenos down today. one year into the obama administration and one year into a congress with strong democratic majorities, we need

leadership action that matches the urgency that that is felt so deeply by working people in this country. [applause] two waffen, washington falls into the grip of ambivalence about the fundamental purpose of government. is it to protect wealthy elites and gently encourage them to be more charitable, or is it to look after the vast majority of the american people? governments in the interest of the vast majority of americans has produced their greatest achievements, the new deal, the great society, the civil rights movement, social security, medicare, the minimum wage, the 40 hour week, the civil rights act and the voting rights act.

that is what made the united states a beacon of hope in a confused and divided world. but, too many people now take for granted government's role as protector of wall street and the privilege. vaisse middle-class americans says overpaid and underworked. they see social security as a problem, rather than the only piece of our retirement system that actually works. they feel sorry for homeless people, but fail to see the connections between downsizing and outsourcing and inequality and homelessness. this world view has brought democrats nothing but disaster. the republicans responses to what for middle-class the false hope of tax cuts, tax cuts that end up enriching their rich,

devastating the middle class by destroying the institutions like public education and social security that make the middle class possible. are you trying to tell me something? >> we are now into our q&a period. >> i'm not done with what i have to say and you invited me here to say it. [applause] >> 25 minutes. we are going to sterba q&a. >> i'm going to continue with my speech. >> can you wrap up in 30 seconds? >> no, i can wrap up and-- people came to hear me talk so we are going to talk. >> you are almost done? >> yeah, i am. thanks. not a problem. here is what i have to say. no matter what i say or do, the reality is that when timbers sent-- unemployment is 10% and

rising, working people will not stand for tokenism. we will not go for politicians to think that they can push a few crumbs are way and then continue the failed economic policies of the last 30 years. i will be even blunter. in 1992 workers voted for democrats who promised action on the job, who talked about reining in corporate greed and to promise health care reform. instead. nafta and emboldened wall street and not much more. we swallowed our disappointments and we worked to preserve its democratic majority in 1994 because we knew what the alternative was. but there was no way to persuade enough working americans to go to the polls, when they couldn't tell the difference between the policies of the two parties. so politicians who think the

working people have it too good, too much health care, too much social security, too much medicare, too much power on the job are actually in fighting a repeat of 1994. [applause] and our country can't stand that repeat. president obama said in his inaugural address that the state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth and now was the time to make good on those words, for congress, for president obama and for the american people. we have some ideas of what those people can do on the weekends it they don't believe us. they can go sit with the unemployed. they can talk to college students looking net tuition hikes and laid-off professors and no jobs at graduation.

they can talk to workers whose jobs are being offshored. they can ask what these americans think about the future, ask them what they think of wall street, of health insurance companies and of big banks. ask them if they won a government that sits in partnership with those folks or a government that stands up for working people. then think about the great promise of america and the great legacy that we have inherited. our wealth designation and are energy as a people can secure for us and our children in the words of my predecessor, samuel gompers, more schoolhouses and less jails, more books and less arsenals, more learning and less voice, more leisure and less greed, the more justice and less revenge. in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures. that is the america that we look forward to end we were looking forward to getting it now.

thank you. [applause] sorry about that. >> that is the right. we are going to get started. [applause] we only have 20 minutes for questions. isd please be seated. the ap is reporting today the initial stimulus bill had virtually no effect on employment and that it was especially ineffective in the construction industry. why should there be another stimulus that this was the result of the first? >> good question. let's go back and talk a little bit about history first. and the first camillus was being thought about nobody thought the economy was going to be in a steep recession as it turned out to be and back then they said we would need at least $1.3 trillion to turn the economy around. remember that? will the republicans stood up

and fight and fight against every last piece of stimulus bill, so we were able to get a bill that was about two-thirds of what was needed. nonetheless, our figures indicated most economists figures indicate we are saving some jobs but we need a second stimulus package, a second stimulus package along the lines that we have lined out the five points the afl/cio lined out would create many jobs. otherwise we stand in danger of a recession going back into the recession because the states are not spending, workers are not spending and if we don't do something to create jobs and create spending, the recovery that is taken over a little bit of the financial economy but not the real economy will take over. >> so you just mentioned a five-point plan to stem unemployment that i think you introduce in november. your proposals included using t.a.r.p. money to offer commercial rate loans to small and medium-size businesses. which pointage your plan have come to pass, which happened,

why did you propose a plan and when you meet mr. obama today, what will you tell them about this plan? >> first of all today's meeting is about the economy. some of the portions of the plan a party been enacted, the extending of unemployment benefits, health care benefits and kober benefits. we suggested a 12 month extension. the house agreed with that. the senate gave its two month extension so we will come back and is it that. investment in infrastructure, reauthorization of the transportation bill, the house is down that part of the senate does hopefully. on that part of the reauthorization of the clean water act, the house is done that in the senate hopefully is working on it. eight to state and local governments is being done somewhat, creation but needs to be done much more because we have 48 states in danger of cutting of spending and thus is precious little good at the federal level to increase

spending to create jobs if the state level is decreasing by the same amount. that is why we have to give them some help. creating jobs, that hasn't been taking up. targeting of job creation has demint taken up yet but it will be in the last one that part-- target money hasn't been done yet. loans are not being made to small and middle sized businesses and middle sized manufacturers that can create jobs, we think we ought to take that t.a.r.p. money that has not been spent, money that has been paid back send it to small regional banks of a can do a media lending to small and medium-sized business and hopefully we will see some of that happen. >> what you see is the major roadblock to getting that passed? >> we can recalcitrant politicians. [applause] any republican party that is more disciplined than anybody imagined that is determined to

see this president fail, said they really want to work for the interest of the country. they fought against health care, they fought against the stimulus package. they had no alternative except to say no. we think that is tragic thing for the country and we hope they finally come to their senses and start thinking about what is best for the country instead of what is best for the next election. >> wouldn't more stimulus signify more debt and how would stimulus advancement to get to the root of the systemic weaknesses that led to the recession? >> stimulus would help us create jobs and would lead to more debt. let me pose this to you. let me do a survey. how many people here can afford to live in the house they are in. raise your hand. how many people paid cash for the house they live in? wow. one person paid cash. the rest of this had to buy it on time.

we can afford, we can afford that house but we had to do it on time. that is the same thing with the jobs program. we can afford a job program of the size necessary to write the economy. we dissed may have to pay for it over time so in the long term it will mean less debt. the more people we put back to work. look at what the chinese did. they spent 9% of their gdp on stimulus and they spent all of its in china. we spend a little bit over 2% of our gdp and we spent some of it in the united states. most of it went out or most of it, but some of it went out. for instance, windmills. if you buy a windmill a broad, 62 cents out of every dollar is used to stimulate somebody else's economy rather than our economy. so, we create jobs, that creates

demand. the man then fuels the economy. then i want to come back to something i said in a speech. what we have had for the last 30 years is a low wage, high consumption economy and to bridge that contradiction we borrowed. we now know that that is a system that cannot long endure. so what will be the new engine that fuels the economy? more debt to get distributed a little more fairly so that everybody can then demand something because one person, a millionaire with say $100, one person with $100 creates double less demand than 100 people of with 1 dollar. what we have to do is make sure then the wealth gets spread out a little more so we can build this economy by strength. the other thing is to reregulate

the economy. if we only stimulate the economy and go back to the same economy we had come of the same result will happen. the people at the top will walk away with the vast majority of what is produced in the rest of the country will see more jobs go overseas. so it is up to us. we are at a crossroads a we are urging people to act quickly to create those jobs because there is suffering. hopefully they will do that. if they don't i think they truly will face this corn of the american populace in he elections. >> the demand for shorter work time was the traditional response to unemployment by the american labor movement. and the 19th century the struggle for the eight-hour day was the courts union policy. during the depression the demand for a 30 year workweek was the cfl's part of aware unions today not demanding a four day work week?

>> good question. let's start back with then we would like to have a four day work week of agope for five one fortunately peart getting in node day workweek and we are getting paid as it is right now. when wages started to stagnate and maybe i should just go back a little bit. from 1946 to 1973 wages in this country double. projectivity doubled and so did wages. we had a good thing going. we built the middle class. the greatest expansion of wealth in the history of mankind and the interesting thing during that period of time, the bottom to pour tiles income was increasing faster than the people of the tops of the wage gap was collapsing. from 73 to date, productivity has continued up but wages have stagnated, absolutely stagnated, so workers went through for five different strategies to try to compete with that. the first thing we tried to do

was work longer hours, to get over time to make up for what we weren't getting in raises and when that didn't where we send somebody from the family, another person are to from the family out into the workforce so family incomes held up. when that didn't work we took on a second or third job. that didn't work either. then me got lucky and we hit the high tech bubble of the '90s and people's wages part going up but they looked at that 401(k) and they go, they would come to me that the work center and say look at my 401(k). they felt rich. so they felt like they could borrow. and they did borrow. then the high tech bubble collapsed, and then people, we got lucky again. the housing bubble took off and now my one-handed thousand dollars house is worth $200,000 so i can borrow, so i did.

what we have is an economy that forces people just to get by, to work longer and more jobs. retirees whose pension has been taken away from them, having to go back out into the workforce. we should have a work system where we work fewer hours and make more money, but this economy of the last 30 years has made that impossible for most americans. it is an economy that has ground people up, that is taken jobs in turn back time and lowered the wages. we have people working for wages today that are lower than they were in the '70s. you can't work fewer hours on wages that to pay for 2010 commodities with wages that were from the 1970's. so it is up to us to create those jobs and that is why the employee free choice act is so important.

because we get a chance to make those jobs good jobs, create a better balance in the economy, create a real demand for products so that we don't have to borrow our way into the middle class. weakener actually bargainer way into the middle class. >> speaking of the employee free choice act, what are the prospects for labor law reform in 2010 even just a scaled-down version of the employee free choice act given the momentum shift against the democrats in general election year anxiety? >> i think you'll see the employee free choice act passed in the first quarter to an-- 2010. you will see if have some real effect. it will start creating in making new jobs in this country again. >> enriquez the employee free choice act it seems unseiu president andy stearn have different messages. stearn said there will be a code and you said they may not be.

who is right? what is going on? >> the employee free choice act? the question is wrong. i never said that there wouldn't be a vote. maybe he said there wouldn't become i don't know. i think we are in 100% agreement on that. i think everybody in the labor movement is in 100% lockstep with that. >> some health care reform supporters have expressed frustration that president obama has not weighed in more forcefully to shape the legislation and push it through congress. how do you feel about his approach to the employee free choice act which has been stalled since march? >> the president fully supports the employee free choice act. the vice president fully supports the employee free choice act. the vast majority of the house support the employee free choice sack. the vast majority of the senate supports the employee free choice act and i think we are going to have the employee free choice act despite the efforts of the republican party and a

group of business people who really don't want any kind of labor law reform at all. >> what industries or companies to you believe should be targeted for unionization under efc a? [laughter] and will card check survive in the final vote? >> first of all i think every workshop ought to have the union. [applause] i believe better decisions are made when you sit down at the table as an equal and that will give you a classic example of that. when my son was five years old, he would come up to me and say that i want to do this and i would say no. and that is it. it was no. he didn't have any kind of leverage or any kind of bargaining power with me. he couldn't go to any higher authority. it was no. he had no bargaining power. then two minutes later my wife comes up to me. and my wife says i want to get a

new car. i say, let's sit down and talk about this. it was a whole different process because we came to the table with different leverage. she and i came with almost the same bargaining power. i probably was still on the short and about one, but he had no bargaining power. that is what the union does. one worker against an employer, it doesn't matter how righteous you are, you have no ability to do anything. but no matter what the group is, if you have people who are sitting down and they are working, first of all they can work together more effectively. we can create partnerships where we really do take on the y consider to be the people who are the opponents we have to meet in second of all petr decisions can be made. or you can try to legislate every issue so every-- every health and safety issue could get legislated. that would be a real mess,

wouldn't it because you couldn't created one-size-fits-all and every place. collective bargaining allows everybody to taylor every decision or every problem they have for the best for those two parties and so it is a great solution that i think it ought to be in every industry and every workplace. >> would you be willing to accept a compromise that drops card check but maintains binding arbitration? >> of the person that's the question has the power to do that, come on up and i will bargain with you. otherwise i make a habit of not bargaining in public. >> thanks to the hold on tsa director dominque erol suthers reed, labor relations has been inserted over the detroit airplane bombing scare. how would allowing tsa workers to bargain collectively affects security? >> if you listen to senator demint it would have an

adverse effect on security but i think i make the case that his hold on having a leader for tsa is actually lessening security in this country because they have an interim leader. [applause] they have an interim leader but they don't have a leader for tsa and i think that has an adverse effect. let's see if i get the logic right. the pilot can be in a union, and they are. the flight attendants can be in a union, and they are. the mechanics and all the ground personnel can be in a union that they are. but the people who checks them somehow, if they are in a union, somehow that adversely affects national security. i just don't get the logic of it. i think if they were in a union they would have better, we would have better security in this

country. going talk to them. when you go to talk to them. they are overworked. there are too few of them around. we will these be able to say this is what is necessary for real security at the airports and we are going to bring a union to everyone of this tsa people and more security to those tsa worksites. [applause] >> will you actively oppose the health bill that the senate faber taxes in there? >> we are working diligently. we have been working for decades on that, to try to get health care, health care bill passed in this country, for decades and we are not about to stop now. i am not about to speculate on what is going to be in that bill are what is not going to be in that bill. the senate bill from our point of view is inadequate. it does not deserve the support of working men and women that we are a long ways from the finish line yet and we are going to try to get a bill that does, should and will garner the support of

working people in this country, because bringing health care to every citizen out there is too important for us to get this close and then say we quit. [applause] >> we are almost at a time but before as the last question we have a couple of import matters to take care of. first of all let me remind the members and futures features on march 5th the honorable mitt romney former governor of massachusetts will be here, and on april 12, dennis quaid, the actor, will discuss the prevention of potentially deadly medical errors. second, i would like to present our guest with the traditional in much coveted npc mug. [applause] >> thank you. >> you are welcome. we are only going to give you half a cup of coffee because years beach wendover 25 minutes. [laughter] >> if you would have given me a full cup of coffee it would have

been an hour. [laughter] >> okay, so your meeting with the president this afternoon. what will you be telling him? >> we will be talking about the weather, about this weekend's football games in who we think is going to win the super bowl, health care and a couple of other things. [laughter] we will be talking about health care. >> what is your message to him? what you want to come away from that meeting with? >> we are going to talk to the president, a friendly meeting among friends tried to solve problems and i'm not going to go into what we are going to talk about. we will talk about trying to solve problems. >> okay. would like to thank you for coming today. i appreciate it. >> really? >> really. [applause] i would also like to thank manned national press club staff members melinda cooke, pat

nelson in joined booze for organizing today's lunch and also thanks to the nbc library for its research. video archive that today's luncheon is provided by the national press club broadcast operation center gori offence are available for free download on itunes as well as our web site, and non-members may purchase transcripts, audio and video tapes by calling (202)662-7598 or e-mailing us at archives at press.org. for more information about the national press club, please go to our web site at www.press thought oh r.g.. i thank you and we are adjourned. [applause] [inaudible conversations][inaib]

>> now a discussion on the role of government and the economy was yuval levin editor of the national affairs journal. hosted by the american enterprise institute, this is little less than an hour and a half. >> good evening.

my name is leon, a fellow at agi and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this bradley lecture, the first of the new year and to extend a special welcome also to those of you joining us to the wonderful efforts of c-span. the next bradley lecture will take place on monday, february 8 when professor gerard alexander of the university of virginia will speak on the topic, to liberals know best, intellectual self-confidence and it claims to a monopoly of knowledge. it is for me an enormous pleasure and distinct personal privilege to be able to introduce today's speaker, my former students and colleague and now my friend and teacher, yuval levin. editor of the new quarterly magazine, national affairs. offering advice about teaching, leo strauss once wisely suggested that one should always

assume that there is one silence student in your class he was by far superior to you in head and in hard. yuval levin won first appearing a decade ago in my classes at the university of chicago was not quite silent, but it soon became apparent, most especially from his writings and his manner, that he was precisely the sort of student strauss wanted teachers to imagine, smart, deep, wise and humanly admirable. and emigrant from israel to new jersey abby chait yuval came to the committee on social thought from a staff position on capitol hill working for newt gingrich, a job he landed fresh from completing his undergraduate studies in political science at american university. his bachelor's thesis, a youthfully ambitious account of the world of recent and social thought from antiquity to modern times-- [laughter]

was published in 2000 under the title, the tyranny of reason. although distinguished himself in graduate school, yuval fortunately for us was drawn more to public affairs than to the professory awe anti-joined my staff on the president's council on bioethics, serving in several capacities and rising to become its executive director. he then served as associate director of the white house domestic policy council in the george w. bush administration were his portfolio included health care, bioethics and culture of life issues before taking up residence at the ethics of public policy center in 2006. there he has been senior editor of the new plant is, become a contributing editor of national review and is written many important essays and reviews also for commentary, "the weekly standard," "the wall street journal," "the washington post" and now also regularly for "newsweek" on topics ranging from immigration, social

indicators of welfare to health care, stem cell policy to schrute assessments of partisan politics and major political candidates. on this side as a bird he has also managed to edit with crist demute they raise and a ad volume on religion in the american teacher and is produced a remarkable book of his own, imagining the future of science and american democracy a silver looked beneath current disputes to reveal the deep and decisive differences between liberals and conservatives regarding how they think about the future. there is more. in the midst of his daily attention to current affairs, he is produced a truly magisterial doctoral dissertation, soon i hope to become a book, on the thought of edmund. thomas pain which is bounds comprehensibly it's the differences between them faithful to their time and thought it also in ways that eliminate the fundamental differences between liberal and

conservative thought today. finally, september 2009 so the first issue of national affairs under yuval's impressive. which represents for those of us that were nurtured by as nothing less than the rebirth of the public interest risen like a phoenix from the ashes. happily early dear friend and colleague irvin kristol live to see this rebirth then who wrote perhaps his last letter noted encouragement to yuval. you have all not unlike irving a man of wide learning come clear thought, putin goodson suntree judgement possessing remarkable equanimity liking of pettiness and rancor and blessed with a quick pen and generous spirit and a prodigious capacity for good works. lincoln's hero burke, yuval holds together respect for tradition and the spirit of reform by a love of country had a profound appreciation of the

decent life that makes possible for so many. teachers often flatter their students by telling them that they have learned more from then than they have in-- but in the present case is the absolute truth. is latika anticipation that i look forward to his lecture for covering the case for capitalism, which promises to instruct the home team of economists on how best to understand and defend the economic system under which we live and for the most part flourish. please join me in giving a warm welcome to yuval levin. [applause] >> well, thank you very very much. i can tell you how much that means to me and how much i appreciate it. i thank all of you for being here and many thanks to a e5 for the invitation to speak tonight.

it is really a great-- thank you. i've done that many times in the course of the last few years. it is really for me a great and a coupling honor to be asked to deliver a-- and while i certainly know that i don't belong in the week of people that generally deliver them it is thrilling to be in their company and i appreciated very much. agi is the proper place the thing to take up the subject want to talk about tonight, the question of capitalism in this very complicated moment we are living in, and so let's thing together for a while about that question and that moment. four friends of capitalism, the last two years of not been pleasant. first came a cascade of market calamities that seemed almost designed to confirm the most khalid jaden hackneyed criticisms of free enterprise complete with reckless investors careless lending and

irresponsible borrowing wild speculation and an assortment of charlatans, a financial collapse, cavender regulation retirees losing their life savings while wall street fat-cats get their bonuses and even this side of alan greenspan apologizing to a congressional committee for keeping the reins to lose. then came the response from washington which was the least as disconcerting it partially excusable by a pervading sense of panic. by the middle class to the government essentially owns the nation's largest bank, largest insurance company and largest automaker manages substantial part of the financial sector and was declaring winners and losers in massive corporate deals more less ad hoc. meanwhile government spending exploded and lawmakers are busy building new entitlement programs even as our existing ones fall into bankruptcy for. for a moment it seemed as though all this would cause the american people to lose faith in the american economy. last apr scott rasmussen found 53% of americans agreed with the

proposition that capitalism was better than socialism. but that moment passed and has been replaced by way of a populist discontent directed as much as government as the market. the defenders of free enterprise should not take too much heart from this turn in public opinion geppart was just people are uneasy with the instability of the day but it does not form itself into an argument in defense of american capitalism or a coherent case against the emerging contentions of the democratic majority in washington. to direct the public towards such a case we will need to explain what is at risk and what is at stake and why it matters. such an explanation is no simple matter and after decades of defending wintrier another many friends of capitalism have lost sight of the forest of what democratic capitalism as, virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses, its political and moral as well as economic justifications. our first task now was there for recovery of that understanding which will clarify both their objections to the policy

direction of the moment in their prescriptions for a better way. i hope to walker here one brief sketch of what such a recovery mida balkan where it might direct us. it recovery of the case for capitalist and should begin at the beginning. as always when we want to become reacquainted with ourselves we americans would be wise to start with a refreshing dip into the late 18th century when our way of life was born. in this case we should begin by getting into adam smith the original case for capitalist and before returning to our own time. the father of modern economics was a moral philosopher, studentcam in nature and social institutions and his theories of political economy were an element of his larger project for the direction of human passions and appetites. smith began within the you have nature the 2:00 p.m. or cynical. a bleeped of the human beings were fundamentally self-interest we could be guided toward sympathy and benevolence for gore sentiments he said began with a powerful self regard that

expresses itself in our desire for attention, praise and recognition and motivates a great deal of human behavior. even aricept fatigue begins with our sells. we feel for someone in distress because we can imagine ourselves and his predicament but for some of the fact that our supper garte expresses itself and the desire for preapproval offers an opening for mollification for moderating both the passions and animal apatites to make civilized life possible. our ability to step into seminal susus allows us to reflect on our own behavior to lefkow what i am doing look to some observing me and in the question in that imaginary impartial spectator smith would say is the beginning of social order in self-restraint and so the first temples to moral conformity and common social norms. this is how it will function society in their sentimental tendency to self regard him become inclinations to sympathy indecency but that will functioning society takes work for coder choir socialists attentions designed to channel

the sentiments for this kind of moral formation. those institutions were smith's lifelong obsession. he was above all a scholar of how show-- social arrangement secret of education to direct vanity to proper objects he wrote in his first book, the theory of moral sentiments published in 1759. note that he says his aim is education. the id is not the full two acting well or put the products of directing pearly to send publican part of the ideas to shape the character and behavior, to channel human passion for the public good. this is a peculiar kind of moral education. smiths said plainly that there is no use in trying to persuade men to be virtuous, no amount of recitations of character will do the trick. rather it is the experience of life and society that the delegates to the experience to build the human beings moderate virtues that smith things are essential, prudence, restraint,

industry frugality sobriety honesty civility and reliability. these are the virtues of liberal society. there slow but solid virtues which can be very widely shared cannot is cultivated by a few and they'll love for stable and productive lives so make moral corruption by the state less necessary. these moderate virtues are in a sense versions of one larger version, self commander self control. if this is what smith thinks is really the key to the liberal society, subcommand uberwrites is not only itself the great virtue but from it all the other purchasing to derive their principle. indie defines subcommand is the capacity for delayed gratification restraints upon the appetite or in a word, discipline. smith's great project is the transformation of self regarding to self demand by means of social institutions and director vanity to proper objects. by ranging human relations so that there is praise of benefit to be gained by discipline, he

hopes to allow people to exercise virtue and improve their circumstances. smith send missions are very practical. look and free society he writes consists of quote the uniform constanta none interruptive pfeiffer debra manned to better his condition. the moderate virtues make this kind of improvement possible and the wise legislator will arrange things so that the moderate virtues are valued and rewarded. smith knew that this arrangement and not be a matter of direct a portion or management. socialites is too complicated for that. like his teacher adam ferguson and others of the scottish and lightman smith was endlessly fascinated by the paschal sutley between the intentions motivating our actions and consequences of those sections so rather than by coercion such arrangement would be accomplished in a general way through institutional forms that establish rules of the game intended to draw self-interest to people towards the sum means of it banting their interest but without forcing particular

outcomes. smith made the case for this general approach to this theory of moral sentiments in four years later his lectures on jurisprudence he traced the social norms created this way can to be formalized into laws in specific areas of social life. he then collected and expanded the portions of those lectures dealing with questions of labor and commerce into a book about political economy a book called the wealth of nations and published in that fateful year of great ideas, 1776. is economics was one element of smith's larger vision but there was a particularly important one. as a good liberal the bleeped material prosperity was essential to happiness and so should be at the center of moral philosophy. he also thought well was a precondition for a decent society under sympathy. we can't care for others if we ourselves are hungry. his vision of social life therefore required to develop the economic teaching built around institutional arrangements that could help produce prosperity while encouraging discipline and the

modern virtues by making self demanded means of bettering our condition. the wealth of nations offers just such a teaching in just such an institution, the market. the wealth of nations begins with a fat, not an argument. the that the division of labor which been growing for centuries and european economies made possible enormous improvements in efficiency and quality of production. the fighting in subdividing manufacturing processes and to specialize tacit the great deal of time and effort in more importantly created specialization expertise. rabid binnie chanelle lengel little bedell lott each becomes an expert in something in particular and sales in return for money. that way all work is done by experts and so is done better in each person can trade on value of his expertise given him reason to improve his prowess and his products. this process of a change smith calls the market. it is the rinn in which labor capital goods and services are

of value traded in part and lies at the heart of modern economy. but the rules of the market enough self legislated or naturally obvious. on the contrary smith argues, the market is a public institution and requires rule send pope-- imposed by legislators to understand its purpose. this is where his great insight comes in. and smith bostom under the raining economic philosophy, each of the european powers and market rules that serve the interest of the few large domestic manufacturers and training companies to work closely with the government putting economic policy in the service of what they took to be the national interest to unbends the nation's trading position. instead smith argues legislator should govern the markets in the interest of a common consumer. he writes quote, consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

the maximus koessel tippen it would be absurd to attempt to prove it but the mercantile system, in the market the system the interest of the consumers almost constantly sacrificed. by turning the logic of mccain's ballistic economics on its head in establishing a market designed for the good of the consumer smith believes the government's can hunley simmons productivity and wealth and create economic institutions that encourage discipline of moderation and order. serving the good of the consumer would mean imposing uniform rules of open competition on all buyers and sellers which would lower prices and spur economic growth. these rules which smith calls the system of natural liberty would allow participants in the market to set prices and values by opening free negotiation in which no player is allowed to use political muscle or other coercion to compel the price of food and that determined by the framework of the market. the system involves natural liberty not in the sense that this somehow work of nature but rather no player or outsider and

especially not government may impose artificial crisis and so only the natural price, the price arrived at by the buyer and seller can prevail. this would make pricing more efficient reducing costs for consumers direct capital more efficiently than a legislator could and would help the best producers prosper so bennett that the nation as a whole. that does not mean it would serve every individual self-interest. smith it not think there was a perfect harmony of the interests in society. many merchants would certainly be better off without competition and in fact many merchants seek to use their power or to call on friendly politicians to help them avoid it but a system of uniformly applied rules which doesn't prefer larger power for merchants would better serve most people and so better vintage the wealth of the nation as a whole. smith has a very unusual definition of the wealth of nations. the wealth of the state consist of the cheapness of provision and all other necessary inconveniences' of life he writes so the nation as wealthy

in effect when consumer items are inexpensive of these relative to the means of the common people. vaticination as wealth unity select is within the reach of most. this is a very democratic and populist notions of the purpose of the market. the broader the reach of the market, the more efficient will be so smith wants to encompass everyone and to have society become one large market in which he writes, everyman lives by exchanging are becoming some measure of merchants and the society itself grows to be what is properly called the commercials society. and a commercial society smith insists is also a good society. for one thing wealth is necessary for a good society because it reduces the mystery of the poor and it allows everyone to be more sympathetic and generous. if our own misery pinches us very severely we have no leisure to attend to that of our neighbor. and at least as import and the market is not just a mechanism for wealth creation. it is also a civilizing

institutions. for one thing it makes human relations more dignified smith argues. the system of exchange opposed to the more aristocratic system owner and tenant allows even the less privileged to address society in terms of what they have to wafter rather than what they need hosts most puts it in one of his most famous passages, it is not for the benevolence of the boucher the brew or the baker that we expected dinner but from there regarded their own interest a we address ourselves not to humanity but to their self-love and never talked to them of our necessities but have their advantages. nobody but it bedrid chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens. smith is not saying that benevolences degrading but dependence upon the benevolence of others is the moralizing. extending the rule of the market helps most to avoid this fate so allows them to function as dignified equals. the fundamentally popular democratic character of the system imposes also important

moral points for smith. ..

as it turns individual self-interest to the general good of the market there for might also turn individual aphorists into a source of productive energy, self discipline indeed unconstructive risk and enterprise. it's crucial to seize of command and discipline not freedom lay at the heart of smith's case for capitalism. yes, the market involves free competition but that means three of undue influence of some competitors and political compatriots not free as an existential or ideological. in fact competitors forced into the markets by government power and kept by regulation and law for the greater good. as joseph has put it smith at a kid capitalism because it makes freedom possible, not because it is freedom. and it makes freedom possible by guiding people to choose to obey the rules. the question smith sought to answer is given the man are profoundly in perfect can they

be made to want to do good so that they do not have to be forced to do good? smith insists three's riding the answer is yes and the three market is more important means of making that happen. it is an answer to the problem of appetite not unleashing of appetites, it is a case for the possibility of discipline and self restraint not argument against the need for them. but as smith might be the first to say the fact this was his intention hardly guarantees the consequences and without question the moral case for capitalism and especially the case for capitalism as a system of discipline. has long been subject to serious criticism. to recover the case for capitalism beyond m. smith of original formulation we have to take this criticism seriously. there is not today and never has been a serious economic critique of the fundamental tenets of

capitalism. there are only morrill critiques. even those opponents of capitalism who propose alternative systems like the socialists and communists of centuries past offered moral systems, not a genuine economic theory. the moral critique of capitalism tended to fall into two categories. bonn, popular with the socialists and communists is capitalism as unfair to the war. this is to put it on to become bluntly nonsense. the poor in the west and increasingly elsewhere have had no greater deliver than adam smith. it is true inequality persists of course. but the standard of living of the poor has risen dramatically under capitalism and the potential for a speeding poverty is nowhere greater than in capitalist economies. today in america because of persistent poverty have far more to do with culture and economic injustice. but that very point brings us to the second and more serious moral critique of capitalism. that it empties social life of any higher meaning and so leaves

society morally bankrupt even at an to the crisis occurs materially wealthy. it's capitalism in fact a means of replacing material poverty but spiritual poverty? is it in effect the moneymaking machine that durham social capitalism for its fuel leaving in its wheat the society of nihilists. this line of criticism has a long pedigree in the right and left from some of their earliest critics of capitalism to the present day. from romantics to moralist's from post-modernist and neoconservatives. it also recalls the classical christian critiques of merchants as lacking in moral bearings and especially in discipline. trade in the profits wrote st. thomas is mr. principal since the desire for the game knows no bounds. adam smith expected on the contrary the market with a disciplined society and precisely set the balance, or appetite. but as it turns out, our capitalist age is not an age of discipline. far from it. our society is a study in on

down the appetite. our chief public health problem is obesity. our foremost social pathologies result from absence of sexual restraint and personal responsibility. our popular culture much of the time is a diabolical mix of babylonian decadence and vulgarity and our public life is unrestrained gluttonous feast upon the flesh of the future. we borrow more than we can pay. we spend more than we have and use more than we need for all of our immense wealth we manage to live beyond our means. in fact it's almost fair to say we lack for nothing except discipline. but as adam smith can tell discipline above all is what we require to be freed. this is no small problem for the case for capitalism. so what happened? in part as a smith surely understated the challenges of sustaining moral norms and economic dynamism. his expectations rested on the assumption of what to us seems like exceptional social and moral consensus but to him was the reality of british life in

18th-century. the loss of that consensus about no small part by capitalist economy itself. it is a defining factor american life in the 21st century and the challenge of sustaining the way of life in light of that loss is a defining problem of our political economy. and economics of growth and ethic of restraint and for an awkward match in this disappointing sales of the markets are not enough to bridge the gaps. the very least, smith was mistaken to assume capitalism could produce sufficient moral authority to sustain itself. such authority would have to come from more traditional, moral and cultural institutions beyond the market and our case for capitalism must therefore also be a case for those institutions. for the family and religion and tradition. democratic cabalism as at its best is never an easy match but one well worth sustaining. but in heard we also corrupted smith's vision of capitalism in ways that undermine precisely its civilizing powers and make

it increasingly difficult to reap the benefits of the market system as we correct its deficiencies. the morrill features of his political economy is democratic or popular character and it's disappointing effect have been under assault in our time. the first especially by a growing collusion between government and large corporations and the the second especially by a welfare state expanding its reach beyond the meeting. the case for capitalism is nothing if not a case against these to ruinous trends, trends that have long been with us but have dangerously combined and intensified in the age of obama. neither trend would have shocked adam smith. he knew some among the wealthy and powerful but always look for exemptions from the rigors of competition and he urged legislators to resist the pressure. to grant them. though he was a champion and free markets, smith was no fan

of the business. large merchants and principles of joint stock companies and corporations, smith writes or an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public and who have generally in interest to deceive and oppress the public and who according we have on many occasions both received and oppressed. this does not mean they should be oppressed and returned. only they should be subject to the rules of open competition without exceptions. rules that will turn their self-interest to work more constructive paths. otherwise both the efficiency of the market and public's confidence in the fairness and legitimacy of the system will be dangerously undercut. capitalism is a fundamentally populist enterprise governed in the interest of the mass of consumers and it depends upon a clear separation between government and business. if that line is blurred many of the benefits of the system with economic and moral are badly undermined. meanwhile smith also makes clear donner university of the of the

market is essential to its civilizing effect upon individual workers as well as large corporations. as for individuals too are shielded were excluded from the market the organizing and discipline in power of the system will lane dramatically leading the vacuum that will no doubt be filled by eager legislators brimming with ideas. the modern welfare state has had just this affect. welfare rose as an understandable response to the dislocations wrought by capitalism and to the poverty we will always have with us. when it comes to the poorest of the poor cannot subsist without help a decent society is not only bright but obliged to offer help. the modern welfare state extends well beyond the individual. the largest portion of an tire, systems by far is directed to the elderly and is not means tested to be sure only those among them who need help receive it. other middle class entitlements abound with more to come. the health care bill now being advanced by democrats in washington for instance would offer a premium subsidies to

families making twice the median income. the way they are not assigned enormous and thomas are not before and they are aiming at bankruptcy, and i do mean eminent social security for instance will begin running deficits this year. casts a giant shadow over the future of the country but even if they were paid for as they probably will be some de by an enormously expanded tax burden, that will mean undercutting the basic logic of the capitalist economy. it will mean citizens increasingly give their wealth to legislators who then decide how to allocate rather than let the marketplace the mediating role. this is not about public aid for the destitute. it is a gradual but unmistakable transformation of the character of our political economy. it is at least implicitly reaction against the essence of capitalism, a system that leaves economic decisions in the hands of the mass of consumers and subjects nearly everyone to the uniform records of market rules. both the growing collusion of big business and government and growing middle class welfare state or expressions of a longstanding technocratic

distaste on the left for the market economy and especially for the space character of capitalism. there are attempts to allocate more than the wives of consumer preferences and to provide material benefits to the public without the discipline of market rules. the core of adam smith's argument for not by two centuries of evidence is that such micromanagement and concentration of power is neither more efficient work and practice more benevolent than the market. in the wealth of nations, smith was scornful the statesman who imagined so he could get it just right noting that, quote he seems to imagine he can arrange the different members of the great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard. he does not consider the pieces in the chest board of know the principal of motion besides that which the hand and presses on it that in the great chessboard of human society every single piece as a principal of motion of its own altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.

legislators can't know enough yet can't sufficiently of the influence of political motives and interest to micromanage the market successfully. but the technocratic age persists because capitalism can never be tidy enough to satisfy the deep progressive urge for rational control. this is an old story. the modern age from its beginnings as evolved to great forces pulling in very different directions. we might call them crudely science and democracy. science said there is hard verifiable knowledgeable about the workings of the material world and that the material world is all there is so we will best meet our needs by letting ourselves be guided by technical expertise. democracies as we should let ourselves be guided by the preferences and wishes of the people mostly leaves individuals free to pursue their happiness as they wish. the two forces, science and democracy and technology and populism are always at odds but often are and the struggle between them, capitalism is certainly on the side of democracy and the picture

earlier and true insight that lawful chaos rather than managed order is the way to balance liberty and prosperity, justice and wealth. for all the quantifiable variables available to the modern economics, capitalism isn't a technical or scientific system. it is basically a system for diffusing of 40 and decision making power and letting people have what they want to read it or do since the market success as a matter of speaking to people's preferences leaving decisions of the level of the individual exchange is almost always going to work better to produce more wealth and more happiness. that doesn't mean society has to look at the mercy of base preferences but it means we get beyond them by educating people preferences and judgments rather than taking them over by moral education rather than national control. this is why the technocratic term in federal policy is a problem for capitalism and why the populist leader of the reaction these days is the

appropriately for. but it is also why the reaction needs to be informed, refined and elevated by computer argument, the case for capitalism. federal policy in the age of obama is simply put a combination of corporate government collusion. following a crisis itself made possible by decades of increasingly cozy relationships between government and big finance some of the largest corporations in america become words of the state, shielded from the consequences of their own actions and decisions and subject to the control of the political class. and while the technocratic logic of the welfare state give the money and we will choose how to use it has become the overarching vision of american domestic policy. it is of course shortridge ran the economic dynamism of the least as important on its moral consequences. its effect on the ability of the market to exercise discipline on our commercial society and encourage the moderate virtues.

properly understood, the case for capitalism isn't a case for a license or laissez-faire. it is a case for national wealth as a moral good, for the interest of the mass of consumers as the guide policy, for clear and uniform rules of competition imposed upon all, for letting the market said prices, letting the buyers make choices and producers make what they think they can sell while protecting consumers and punishing abusers. it is the case for avoiding concentration of power, keeping business and government separate and letting those who can meet their own needs to so and it is the case for the moderate virtues and courage by market pressures but finally drawn from the deeper wells from the wisdom of tradition, the love of the family and the divine mysteries tug of love beyond love all of which must in turn be supported in courage and strength and. and here finally is perhaps the most daunting challenge confronting the friends of capitalism today. adam smith was right to say that the virtues of self command and

discipline are utterly essential to capitalism and the global society more generally. but he was wrong to think that space capitalism could produce them on its own. these virtues in fact run against the grain of the liberal capitalist culture and so have to be sustained by constant resistance and friction and constant recurrence to older liberal source of wisdom. this can be unpleasant and it is a duty to easy to shirk. the cause of restraint, for delhi and discipline certainly lacks the visceral appeal. even many of those in society most likely to be drawn to such a cause, social and religious conservatives have in the recent years tended to avoid it in favor of bolder and more heroic humanitarian missions like the plight of the sick and were especially abroad. these are no witnesses recall links of course but of not come entirely at the expense of the more commonplace resistance to the decadence of time. without the assistance we could not hope to remain strong and calfee to be of much use to the door of the world.

free and prosperous societies are in constant need of a social conservatism to come to the car remind them of the list in august of their freedom and prosperity depend upon restraint is of command. district is of the essence of the case for capitalism. i american capitalism is in trouble because we've grown for the fall of the case for it and it is under assault by socialist ideologues but misguided technocrats who know not what the do. the public is unhappy and even angry at the site of the recklessness and popular picture of the moment is to write it since it is the popular character of space capitalism that is threatened most. but to pitch alone will want to come and the anchor of elbridge could be easily turned against market as marshalled in its defense. in greek as we are we we must be clear about our purpose. our purpose is to protect and strengthen our way of life, to stand up for a social and economic systems that has lifted billions out of poverty and vastly improved the world and

back to the countless ways it seems lacking and forthright defenders. and to avert the careless like to social democratic melancholy and decline. this general purpose of course has to take form in specific instances and choices and exactly how the broad conceptual argument for capitalism should be translated into policy is always a matter of case by case prudence. but that doesn't mean we can do without the broad argument. the argument first dreamed by adam smith and refined by two centuries of fury and practice. the argument that helps us see what space capitalism means and why and how we should sustain it. in the coming years it is incumbent upon the trends capitalism to rise to its defense and therefore first to understand its character as both an economic and moral enterprise. one whose health and strength are essential to the future of the larger american enterprise. thank you. [applause]

>> the floor is open to questions and afterwards we will have a reception inside. please wait for the microphone. i appreciate you taking your name and preferably questions rather than long speeches. >> fred smith, you touched upon [inaudible] the question of joseph challenge capitalism, he basically argued intellectuals because of envy and self aggrandizement and undermine the legitimacy of the market that it is extremely hard to achieve the agenda you have, i eat the eyes of the world or account for example, but what advice do you have of bringing the intellectual forces that we minorities represent and of the

economic forces that seem to be totally unaware that a cultural war is going on. >> it is a free good question. they're certainly is some truth to the notion that when you lose the intellectuals you lose some of your capacity for self justification. but i think it is a limited truth. i think that the large problem we have, the major source of the loss of legitimacy to the extent it has been lost is actually the collapse of the moral foundations of the portion of our culture where the poor live, not where the intellectuals live, that this we are looking at -- will go to adam smith. smith says there will always be two sets of morals in any society. he calls them loose and tight morals, and he says the rich are always going to be loose morals, they are always going to live the way they want and they are going to be wild.

the poor are always went to have tight morals, and our society it is basically the other way around. we have a kind of upside down victorianism, and it is a very serious problem because first of all it's not quite the fault of the poor. it is forced upon them by a kind of social revolution over the last 40 years. but unlike the middle class and wealthy they don't have as easy way out of this and they don't have the resources to get themselves out of it which for the most part now the wealthy have done. they've returned to a kind of more traditional way of living and we've left the port at the bottom still living of the consequences of the 1960's. the solution to that is not going to come from the intellectuals come from our intellectuals. it's just not come into the question is is there a way for those of us who are fighting these battles of ideas to legitimate the kinds of moral institutions that are going to be necessary for the poor to be able to improve their situation? it is a cultural problem more

than an economic problem and so you need cultural elites as well as intellectual elites. now that's the problem, that's not the solution. i wish i had the solution for you. i think it worked like the kind of work done today and other places around washington in the country is important. it's one way to get their, to empower local and our institutions, the sort of thing that bill schaumburg talked about at the lectures a month ago is extremely important. it is essential to getting out of this problem but i don't think the way he described the problem is quite the nature of the problem we have today. what we have is a massive social dysfunction at the bottom of society and it's the responsibility of everybody else to deal with that. certainly our intellectuals are more blind to that responsibility than most people but i don't think that it's fundamentally going to be an intellectual challenge, it is a

moral challenge and america in the past has proven to be surprisingly capable of dealing with these kind of things whether that will happen in the future though is an open question. >> thank you. great elector. my question is how can you bring the poor and middle class [inaudible] -- a quarter of americans are without health care and cost everybody, and also another question on immigration, whether those two issues will bring those people come solve the problem in the future we are facing. >> well those are not easy questions. i would say a couple of things. first of all, i think there is a

way of looking at our health care problem that says the problem is we have a market system and it's not working for the poor. i think that's not correct. the basic problem in health care is the costs are exploding and the reasons for that have more to do with the lack of market mechanisms than the presence of market mechanisms in part because of the middle class welfare state that basically protects people from the consequences of their decisions and keeps them from doing prices and costs and has a lot to do with why the costs are exploding. so this isn't a very creative answer. it's the basic conservative answer health care is a place where more market mechanisms would do more good for more people. how much the test of bringing people to the middle class is hard to say. i think it has to do to the extent the cost of living is a

problem and as adam smith said the wealth of the nation has to do it cheapness of necessities and we do control health care in the city and we are trying to make it cheaper. it's not clear to be easy. >> yes, that's true. the immigration problem search and his elected with the economic situation and vice versa. we are attractive because we are a strong economy and we have a lot of problems at the bottom of the labour market because we've a lot of legal immigration. the immigration question should be addressed though in my view not as an economic problem but as a first of all question of basic lawfulness, the border shouldn't be wide open, and it shouldn't be so easy to come here illegally but i think also as a matter of basic humanity. it should be easier i think to come here legally.

i guess i don't take that to be fundamentally an economic question. in the back. >> ben from a eitc when paul samuelson died the other day, the obituaries were uniformly favorable, and i assume deservedly so sentence or a paragraph in his famous textbook that said socialism creates wealth more rapidly and more efficiently than does space capitalism. i wonder if i am remembering correctly and be, how prevalent

does that view in the economic profession? >> well i can't tell you if you are remembering correctly. i just don't know. i would certainly say that today a few dozen seems to be terribly prevalent in the economic profession. whether it once was, i think it is still the case as irving kristol wrote in 1980 there basically is no such thing as long capitalist economic theory. if only in the sense what we think of is the discipline of economics as an extension of adam smith's work and as a way of thinking about how economic man functions and a system that begins by denying economic man is a different system and in the case of socialism is fundamentally a morally different system. it's not a different set of economic theories so much. but again i can't speak to the prevalence of the few in the academy.

>> free-lance correspondent. in the introduction, the bioethics is mentioned as one of the fields studied. i have two questions. s to stem cell research, the bush policy and obama policy are quite different. could you comment on both of them? and then in your judgment and your opinion what is the proper stem cell research to be? and second is to the agent orange. the treatment of the american vietnam veterans and a

vietnamese people -- [inaudible] treatment. t want to comment on that? thank you. >> on the first and happy to talk with you afterwards about bioethics and, second i can do much good even afterwards. [laughter] so let's take another question. >> new york times. i wonder if you could comment a little i hate to bog us down and weeds of policy but based on your own experience on the lessons of the bush era for the challenges that you're talking about because it seems as though you could make a case the bush administration represented a broad attempt to come to grips with exactly the challenge that you're talking about, how to marry a defense of capitalism to

a kind of cultural critique of the culture that it summon up the i think in hindsight both on the left and now on the right the bush era is regarded in a way as a kind of precursor to the trends that you're talking about in the age of obama so the owners of society, the rhetoric looks like industrial policy in the housing market a foretaste of the current health care debate and so on so i'm curious what is your take to be the broad lessons of the bush era for the problems that you're discussing? >> i think in a way both sides of the way that you that ? right. that is there was a desire to find a means of expressing the need to balance the cultural problems of the capitalist

society with a free-market economics of american conservatism. i would say that in practice the former was the more than the latter because it is easy to do rhetorically. a lot of it is a matter of time, and some of that talking was done. in terms of actual policy, i would say on whole what we saw, what we did i should say not entirely up to draft the bush administration, was basically an extension of the middle class welfare state. it was walked into more or less backwards. it was not the design with the intention generally though in some cases it was. but if you look at the effect, the consequences i think it is fair to say that is what happened.

now, the other leg of this, the collusion of corporate america and federal government certainly extends back very far into both republican and democratic administrations. that too big to fail regime is a product of the middle 1980's of the height of the reagan administration. certainly our middle class welfare state in general has been around a very long time. these trends were not curtailed in the bush years, let's put it that way. some old friends here will still be friends if i put it that way. [laughter] at the very end of course, we saw the beginning of the contention with the economic crisis things were done that certainly would not have been contemplated earlier in the bush administration. and it's very hard to judge those decisions because they were undertaken in circumstances

of extreme panic and they may have well been right but that does not preclude us from judging the consequences on the merits and i think the consequences have been a serious problem. >> alex pollock of aei. thank you very much for the most interesting talks, and especially for emphasizing the key point which is the point of capitalism is to benefit the vast majority of the people which obviously does. but somehow that most basic point as you say gets lost in most of the discussion, and i also agree on the notion of how an order for that to happen it has to be married to a regime of self discipline a little bit, the british law of the real family. but could you see some more about how we might actually do

that to make progress on the soft supply-side? >> in a way it is where i try to in that which is to say we need more cranks, social conservatism, unapologetic you know, be a kind of social conservatism, and it's no fun and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't make good television and all that, but it is simply an essential to the proper functioning of a capitalist society, and there has to be preconditions. there has to be some conditions that allow people to find that we've been attractive to see that as their proper place in society and it's very complicated. there are social conservatives but i would say social conservatives in a liberal democracy due to sorts of things. one is or for their sense of

justice and another is the restraint appetites and these are two very different things. they are done in very different tones and in different times of american history social conservatives tended to do one or another much more. and i do think we are in a moment where the inclination to look out for the interests of the week which is of course noble and admirable inclination, very much prevails over the inclination to restrain the appetite of society. that's been grateful to the pro-life movement and it's been very good for efforts to help the sick and africa and these have done wonderful things in both cases. but it has not been so good for the moral condition of society, and as i said before especially the condition of the poor and so i think we need a revitalized social conservatism. how you get there again is maybe next month's lecture. [laughter]

>> yuval. jonah goldberg, "national review" and l.a. times. i thought it was a fantastic talk probably because like you and interested in the weeds of conservative its turf battles and one not. one of the things i found very refreshing is how much to emphasize the role of capitalism and fermenting virtues of restraint to the reliability, the moderate virtues, that is completely at odds with the rhetoric you hear on the right today. if anything the fusion of this project of conservatism and melding social conservatism and libertarianism, fever and the ends of basically have won that fight and it's all about, it is all rights, economic rights, my right to own this and by that, my right to live the life i want to do it's almost as if that language of sexual mores has

been incorporated into the economic activity. and my question for you is number one, do you believe that talk is a valuable part in the case for capitalism and second of all do you think it is actually correct? >> welcome it is to simply give a yes or no and to that but if i am compelled i would say no i don't think that it is a particularly valuable thing either for the case of cabalism or the larger endeavor. i don't think capitalism is a matter of rights. the market i think smith was right the market is a public institution, social institution created with a purpose and it's not a matter of rights, it's not a function of natural rights, and i think that the more libertarian way of thinking about this question that does prevail on the right mix it

difficult to seek the balance between prosperity and morality and the balance is not impossible to sustain. it has been sustained a long time in america but i think it would be impossible to sustain if we take the case to be fundamentally a libertarian case. there is a lot of good in with the libertarians have to say, there's a lot of truth. but i personally don't think the fundamental core actually is true as a matter of describing human life, human nature, and so there is certainly a problem there and i would try for a very different kind. i think social and fiscal conservatives can be natural allies, not perfect allies. there are vast differences on a very real differences but i think they can be allies if they

both are neither liberal nor libertarian conservative, conservative and you don't want me to store on edmund burke because i don't stop but conservative and a sense that seeks just that kind of balance that has a vision of the liberal society as an achievement rather than as a beginning, rather than a set of principles that than have to be applied before malae and arithmetic onto social life. so, the view of things like present here is as much criticism of libertarians as liberals. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> thought you might. [laughter] >> of course. [laughter] the classical liberal as i understand is that an aesthetic ideas. it was institutional idea and the progress of success was less than when back capitalism that

in pre-empting its ability of the market to move into new areas and values emerge, environmental areas, but also preventing the educational systems and others, driving them into the political regime and forcing this on to this confrontational area where the rights approach leave me alone became antivalued in a sense, i think it's not quite fair to blame the libertarians. [laughter] >> i'm not so much planning libertarians as saying they don't hold the answer to the problem. i don't think the are the reason. but i do think that there are two different kinds of ways of thinking about the original classical liberal inside and there always have been. we say classical but there never actually was a simple classical liberalism. the dispute has always been there and it's a disagreement about whether the liberal society is fundamentally an achievement of western

civilization achieved by countless generations of slow and careful buildings of social and moral and political institutions or whether it is a break from western civilization, a set of principles that have been discovered and should not be applied to social life in the hope of moving beyond politics to a more rational way of living. these are both liberal ways of thinking. they are -- one is a kind of conservative liberalism that wants to sustain the achievement , and the other is a kind of progressive liberalism that wants to move beyond liberalism. that is our politics that's also the politics 200 years ago. it's politics at least since the french revolution, and it isn't always clear to me where libertarians are in the division

>> national review. yuval committee portrait the collusion between the big government and big business and the growth of the middle class welfare state as the product of contemporary liberal technocrats distaste for capitalism. but i wonder if that is quite fair in technocratic liberals who after all do not regard themselves as being hostile to capitalism. they think of themselves as saving capitalism from its characteristic fall and excess for example if they think that you need to create a certain amount of stability there for example increasing access to health insurance and that will enable things like support for free trade and i just wonder whether you've been quite fair and -- >> i suppose no one could ever accuse me of being fair. [laughter] but i think that smith's view

that capitalism was fundamentally a space system and committed to as i say a kind of lawful chaos as the essence of social order is not taken by everyone to be of the essence of capitalism. there are a lot of people and a lot of economists to take capitalism to be a very orderly systematic kind of thing that requires precisely a rational system of organization, and that is a way in which the kind of people who today call themselves progressive capitalists miniet hamandiyah obama administration can say i think with a straight face that is truthfully that they are trying to defend the system, not undermine the system. but i think they began from a different notion with that

system is to undermine the also than capitalism. they begin from an ideal that i think is not what we have had and it is probably what we should not have. they are not communists. they aren't trying out for it to undermine capitalism, and they believe in free enterprise for a certain degree. they believe and economic freedom to a certain degree. but i don't think they believe and the space principles that actually underlie those things and they think that capitalism is more amenable to the kind of rational control they are after the and i think it is. >> thank you. you have spent at least of the

criticisms have been sort of leveled at the collusion between big business and government though early in the talks indicated that there was a kind of moral critique of capitalism in which capitalism in a way in its own moral foundation was strongly. not much time has actually been spent on that and you've tried to recover the case for capitalism as if he meant to give it three cheers, not irving kristol's two of them. the question is, maybe this would be refocusing it. has the character of capitalism in our lifetime, my lifetime changed so much that the teachings of adam smith and the hopes adam smith had for this

are really very problematic, only not so much only to what the government welfare state has done but what capitalism has become on its own and how intact is precisely responsible for the inflation of kneip list is a lawyer and the weakening of those kind of institutions that you insist are necessary beyond capitalism to sustain it? >> i do agree and that is the way in which i think as i said at the end of the talk smith was mistaken to think that capitalism could sustain itself morally, but is it always needs to be fed by a third sources of moral authority and without question it undermines those other sources by its very functioning. it undermines allegiance, it makes us less interested in what they have to say. to me that suggests not that smith's teachings don't have anything to say to us but that what we need above all is a recovery of some of the moral

and social authorities of those institutions that made it possible for him to say what he said, that made it possible for him to see, to envision a way that capitalism and a decent society not only would coexist the would reinforce one another. and without question, we are in trouble on that front, deep trouble, so three cheers or two cheers. i think that in the way that irving kristol put the two cheers for capitalism i agree with him, but it has to be the case that we do something about it and try to restore what capitalism is missing. it's not easy to do and it's not easy to do especially in a capitalist society. but to my mind as i said at the end of the talk that is the most challenging and most important element of the case for capitalism which is it has to be a case for not only

non-capitalist but not on liberals that institutions that have to continue to sustain our society. maybe that is impossible but i think the history of liberal democracy suggests it's not necessarily impossible. that's probably the best we can do. >> i want to follow on leon's question because this is bugging me a little bit, too. you said at the beginning that adam smith operated in the context of 1776 of the time period in which certain standards existed, certain balance existed. that was then, this is now, the way we live now seems to me somewhat different.

short of the utopian revival you seek. my friend used to say this is the american enterprise institute for public policy. so short of that, what do you see as the reordering of the various balances between individuals, between individuals in the state that might give you time to have toward committee work while the rest of us at a lower level try to set in place band-aids to keep the patient alive? >> well, that's obviously the difficult question that's come up from a number of people in a number of ways. again, i think that the basic character of my prescription is

for first of all as a beginning for the defenders of capitalism for conservatives especially to recognize what they are defending is also a moral system. it's also social conservatism, the religious traditions of our society and that's not a policy prescription, but i think that is a necessary precondition to our doing anything worthwhile tall and necessary not only in a conceptual sense but necessary because we are not doing it now. it's something we ought to be doing differently. exactly what that means i don't think a moral revival is a matter of public policy. i don't think you can make it happen. it's been tried in certain respects, and it was even tried in the bush administration in certain respects. but in the end, the united states has been fortunate to have experienced religious revivals at a very key moments that have made it possible to continue to function the way

that we have. you can't just order those on command. if you could we should put in an order. [laughter] we could really use one. we could do some things to help make that a little easier to not stand in the way but could i tell you exactly what they are? i couldn't. it is useful to know what is needed even without knowing exactly how because at least you can tell some decent ideas apart from some terrible ideas. but an exact roadmap i certainly don't have. >> probably take one more. >> one more question. okay. >> i have a question. i don't quite understand the case that the social malaise and access the texas are caused by capitalism and one could make a case that it is the lack of having to be responsible for

your own actions and its the welfare state and crony capitalism and loose money policies and all of that, so i really missed it. i didn't catch it. i don't see why capitalism causes social excess. other systems can do the same thing. >> first of all, part of the answer is capitalism doesn't prevent social access, human beings cause social access. we are creatures of excess, and the fundamental social question for every society is how do you restrain that. so i don't simply blame capitalism for the fact that we are human beings. on the other hand, it does in power a certain kind of thing that certain kinds of sentiments and appetites. it tells you ought to have when you want, which is not always the best thing to tell everybody. if what you're after is social restraint and restrict of social access.

now, the basic case i try to make is that adam smith's contention that capitalism would counteract that seems not to have proven him true at the very least. i think it is also true that capitalism has exacerbated that, that a system of satisfying appetites is a system that produces more of what your satisfying. it's kind of an economic principal in a way. that means we need some other way to restrain ourselves, that means we need some other way to impose moral order in society. you can't do without it. it's not going to work and so it's not capitalism. i think it is a matter of friendly corrections. thank you. [applause]

[inaudible conversations]

the group advocates for highway and auto safety released its annual state by state ratings today covering issues ranging from text messaging and distracted trying to seat belt use and child car seats. this is an hour-and-a-half. >> [inaudible conversations]

>> good morning, everybody. welcome. my name is judy stone, president of advocates for highway and auto safety. we are the sponsor of the 2010 road map to highway safety laws. we are an alliance of consumer medical health safety groups and insurance companies who are working together to get laws passed in congress and in state legislatures. and we have been doing that since 1889 when we were founded. i want to welcome those of you who have joined us here at the national press club in washington, d.c.. and to those of you who are watching via the webcast, at www.saferoads.org, and to those of you viewing through the internet, i would like to say that you can access hour for electronic press at the home page at the scene where the address. i would ask if you don't mind if people could turn off their cell phones. thank you very much.

we are very pleased to be joined today by a group of those who a tie with safety to unveil our 2010 addition of the road map to state highway safety. the rating of each state on their enactment of 15 in central high we safety laws that are of vital importance to the health and safety of american motorists and their families. after my opening remarks, we will hear from the chair of the transportation safety board deborah hersman followed by u.s. part of transportation deputy secretary john parcari, and i have to say both debbie and john are going to have to sneak out so they are not leaving the press conference for any other reason that they have other appointments they must get to and we appreciate them coming to join early on the agenda. after that, jackie, vice president at that kids will present the findings of this year's report and senator john

cullerton president of the illinois the senate will get his perspective. following them, we will hear from susan vavala of delaware and marge lee of new york, who are mothers who've lost children in terrible car crashes. the or the human faces of this never-ending american tragedy that takes the lives of tens of thousands of family members and friends each year creating personal lifelong losses that words cannot adequately describe. and these are losses we say are largely preventable. we will secure from dr. joseph wright of the american academy of pediatrics and dr. wright is the children's medical center in washington, d.c.. and dr. steven hargarten at the medical college of wisconsin. these are too mentally in the trenches of highway safety war.

we're pleased be joined by bill martin and former administrator and public citizen president emeritus joan claybrook but shares of advocates for highway and auto safety on our board of directors and then we will complete the speaker a lineup with congressman chris van hollen of maryland who is one of the lead sponsors of the safety net modest driver uniform protection act also known as the stand-up act to get we are going to close by taking questions from reporters who are here and from some of those watching on the webcast. before introducing a hour first speaker i just want to point out that we have made changes to this year's wrote that report by adding new laws that are part of the scorecard and by putting aside a few older always to the echols that has been dealt with by the states. these are designed to keep the core legislative agenda fresh and on the cutting edge of the essential laws the deserve the most attention by a were