progressive elementary school. the gift of the eighth grade class that was graduate for 2009 was a beautiful mosaic that said -- the wall, capitalism will fail. and i thought it was very interesting in this private school where they announced capitalism will fail from the eighth grade class, was charging tuition with almost no scholarships of 17000 a year. so i'm not sure that all the parents who were paying $17000 a year to see their children indoctrinating against capitalism are actually looking forward to capitalism betting. look, the problem of course with this idea that capitalism is doomed or capitalism will fail is basically clarified, if you go away from a media focus. the problem with the media focus is is always immediate. it's just what is happening

right now, this moment. the whole idea of news is this moment up-to-the-minute and then you forget things a moment later. if you take a broader focus and you look at a 50 year, or 30 or even 20 year perspective, it's obvious that capitalism has not fielded what has that has been socialism and particular communism. i think it's striking, the "new york times" today, this morning i was reading it on the train, which did not arrive on time, i was reading on the train the "new york times" has a review of the new nostalgic history of communism called the red flag. and they were basically lamenting the fact that communism has all but disappeared in the world, except for they say it's like examples like a smallpox virus preserved in the laboratory in cuba and in north korea. but that's pretty much it. and if you look at the elections i cover in my book, the

elections in europe or the european parliament, the socialist got wiped out everywhere. there's only one country in europe which is greece. and if you look at cross the continent, anyone where the labour party which again is the new labour, which is not the old proudly socialist labor of the past, the tories, conservatives and just new toys and new conservatives. in britain, our research and. there are conservative more friendly to the free market governments in france, and italy, in germany, in denmark, and in israel where part of my family lives. my father, may he rest in peace, went to live in israel 19 years ago. and my brother has made his whole career there. there have been several books about the capitalist revolution in israel stripping away the socialist past that has always held back that economy, and the israeli economy has been a

marvel, as soon as they were able to lower the tax burdens and the punishing burdens of regulation on business. and it's been a phenomenal example. right now israel has more companies listed on the nasdaq than any other nation in the united states. there are more israeli nasdaq companies in japanese, than canadian, than british, then german, then anything. it's extraordinary. capitalism has not been shown to fail. capitalism has been shown to work, and here in the united states there is a tremendous amount of self-pity that is encouraged by the victim. one of the things in my ratio is it's the michael medved show where we're proud to say everyday i am not a victim, the idea of american victimhood suggest that our standard of living and our difficulties and our choices, it's all much lower, we can't live the kind of lives that our parents live and it's getting worse.

everyone has heard this. it is nonsense. now, robert rector rodger at heritage writer in the building has done terrific work on this and i quote him extensively in the book. if you actually look at any meaningful measure of living standards in the united states, the progress under capless american, particularly since 1980, has been dazzling, has been unprecedented. the options that are available to people, the extended life expectancy, college, we're now at at a stage where the majority of american young people in every ethnic group, are pursuing some form of post high school graduation after they graduate from high school. this is phenomenal. sometimes that education may not be worth what people pay for it, but the fact is one of the reasons that college tuition is so tremendously expensive and it's gone so much more than the cost of inflation is because

more and more people want it and can get it. it's extraordinary. in the 1960s, barely 10 percent of americans graduate from college. we are now pushing 30%. out give you one other example. when i was in college back when the earth cooled in the 1960s, and i got a part-time job starting my sophomore year. the main motivation, i might want to say, i was a national merit scholar. and my parents helped me and i didn't need the job to pay for tuition or for room and board. it was much more reasonable than. that was covered. i got the job because i had a girlfriend back home in california. and i had to pay for phone calls. and i figured it out at the time. i was making minimum wage, which at the time was transfixed and our. and it took me about three hours

of work to pay for a five minute phone call. think about that for a moment. any of you who have cell phone plans that are unlimited, as most people do. the cost of long distance calls out the cost of air travel, everyone travels by air today. pretty much everyone. i can take that flight from san francisco the other night, everybody was on it. [laughter] >> i don't know. honestly, it seems like there was, i don't know, this seemed like a homeless express that was traveling from san francisco to philadelphia. but it was great. that's america. the truth is, that more is available to more people than ever before. and anyone who doesn't see the added opportunities, comfort, life expectancy, educational opportunities, that we have that would have been undreamed of for

our parents and grandparents, anyone who doesn't see that is deliberately blind and deaf. and limited, and embittered. my grandfather was a barrel maker. he came over from ukraine in 1910. he never stayed in a hotel in his life. why would you? that would be very rare for americans to one of the figured that i have in my book, people are not going to believe it but it's an official labor department figure and you know they wouldn't lie. labor department of the united states, typical american family, today spends more and eating out in dinners and is a fast food restaurant or luxuries restaurants or different kind of restaurant than the family spends on health care. and we spend too much on health care. the idea that capitalism is dead, i go into the reasons why capitalism is not dead. .com is very much alive and has

been on the market has been advancing, and why so many -- there are at least a billion people who were living under socialist systems, probably more than 3 billion people who were living under social systems if you count both india and china. 30 years ago. who are now living under something that resembles a free market. capitalism is on the march, not dead. brings us to the second biggest lie. is what we don't have to spend so much time on. so breathtakingly stupid. people believe, and you will find many people believe, including some educated people, or presumably educated people, that when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. okay, if you believe when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, then you believe that creating wealth causes poverty. somehow this is not -- how does creating wealth cost poverty? wealth is not stolen. i mean, he is credited with the

stupid line behind every great fortune is a great crime. sorry, that's not true. behind every great fortune is a great creativity. the idea is that if you look at human beings as infinitely creative, then there is no set amount of wealth to which you are limited. creating new wealth does it take wealth away from somebody else. it is not a zero-sum game. and by the way, this is dramatically illustrate by our recent downturn. during the recent downturn, the economic crisis, the group of the population in terms of both dollar and raw dollar amount and percentage who suffered most were of fluence people. the people who had portfolios to see them deflated. and again, did this help anyone? good, now the rich are really suffering. no, it led people to lose jobs. what do you think happens if

your boss is losing money? if your boss is losing money, if he loses his net worth, if he finds it more difficult to borrow money to keep the business alive, what happens to your chance for a raise? what happens to job? it goes away. this idea of when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, it is essential marxism. it has been repeated by every historical example to one of the things i do in the book as i go back and look at some of this stuff, nostalgia garbage, that the left used to believe. a lot of it goes back to a nineteentnineteen point windsong called and we got fun. which has become a standard and still use -- there's a line in and we got fun, there's nothing sure when the rich get richer, and then they play a game. they are expecting to save the poor get poorer but they say the poor get children. and then they played the poor get laid-off. the whole idea of the poverty

causing wealth of a zero-sum game needs to be rebutted. and one of the ways to rebut it, and tremendously important that people acknowledges, is if you have a materialist worldview, where there is only so much matter on earth, that nothing else can ever be created. matter is neither created nor destroyed. then okay, you can believe there's only so much wealth. and it's simply a question of chopping up the wealth and moving it around, not creating more. george byrne shaw was a pretty smart guy, even though he was a diehard socialist who once said if you rob peter to pay paul, you can generally count on the sport of paul. and that of course is what a great deal of liberalism is based upon. is the idea that you will rob peter to pay paul and make sure there are enough paul's out there to support you. but the notion that that is

society's job is to spread around a fixed amount of wealth is to deny the inherent creative power of the individual. and it's basically to look at the world in purely materialistic terms. says in the bible, everyone knows, that man is created in gods image. if man is great in gods image, like god we are infinitely created. there is no limit to what we can create. there is no limit to what we can do. that is the american idea. that brings me to big lie number three. big lie number three, particularly popular right now, is a big lie that says that corporate executives are overpaid and corrupt. of course, you will find a lot of people, even conservatives who will say, yeah, there are a lot of corporate executives, why do they need these tremendous bonuses? one of the things you find that when you actually research bonuses, and the financial industry, and banks that offer,

is many of these bonuses actually function as commissions that it was structured this way basically because of governmental interference, because -- this is basically a tax dodge where people are paid in bonuses and often bonuses are stock options. because it's a way of avoiding that greedy hand of government there but the point is that bonuses function as commissions, and even if a company has a terrible, losing season, you still want to reward those salesmen, or those representatives who are doing a good job on a losing team. for instance, people in this country don't understand business. but everybody understands sports. there are millions of americans who play fantasy baseball. right here i understand, you have a baseball team called -- will, some people call it a baseball team. the washington nationals, not a very successful corporation, have been good will on the field and have been doing well off the

filter however, they have a plan that -- player named ryan zimmerman. does he deserve a bonus, yes, he does. and he got one. but he's playing for a losing team. the nationals were lack 200 games behind, out of first place. not really, i think it was about 35, but they didn't do well. but that doesn't matter, you see that the point is if you have a bonus structure, this has to do very directly with some of these wall street bonuses, the basic point over here is that this argument that says that somehow the fact that someone is doing well is going to take away from someone else is utterly absurd that if your neighbor all of a sudden has a very good year in business, and has more money to remodel his house or do relents gave the french are in, or to get a nicer car, that doesn't hurt you. if all of a sudden you live in a community, say a small town, if

somebody has a business that is booming and he can create more jobs and building new storefront, it doesn't take away from your business. it brings more customers, more energy. there is no finite amount of wealthier, and the notion that corporate executives are all corrupt and overpaid, some are corrupt, but generally, and i cite several studies that have been done of those. business success is by and large based on behavior that people would describe as a virtuous. if you look at the consistent qualities that predictably lead to business success, the quality more than any other, is focused. the ability to concentrate, to focus, to shut out all distractions. reliability. hard work, integrity. people who are all over the map have attention deficit disorder will tend not to function well. or succeed in business.

business does not create or encourage or promote fights by large turkey is there are bernie madoff in the world. and just bernie madoff is spending his life and i think many more lifetimes in prison. this is generally what happens to people who buried the iron laws of business success that all of that exist basically because what business depends upon is providing people with some service or product that they choose. that brings the two big lie number four. big lie number four says, small business is good, big business is bad. you alluded to that in the rasmussen poll. i have several bits of polling data that suggest that small business is among the most popular institutions and trusted institutions in america, and big business is among the least popular and trusted. this is truly peculiar. it is truly peculiar. why? because every single small business in the country, wants

to get bigger a small business is generally a business that hasn't gotten big yet, or a business that hasn't been particularly successful. that's the nature of the. every big business in the country, almost without exception, started off as a small business. the traditional definition of a small business and big business would surprise a lot of people. according to the department of commerce and the department of labor, federal statistics, anybody know? do you know how many employees you have to have to be considered a big business? 500, good for you. that's exactly. most people think a business that employs 400 people was pretty big. or even a business that employs 100 people. think about a. if you employ 100 people you're a pretty big business. this is an arbitrary distinction. there are some products and some services that require a big business. i was was talking about airlines before. you cannot build airplanes in your garage. if you're going to build jet

aircraft and asked people to risk their lives getting on them and fly from one place to another, it's not going to be a little mom-and-pop operation. this is mom and pops airline. we hope to get this puppy up there tonight. no, you need a big business. there are certain things that require a economies in scale otherwise you can't compete, you can do it successfully. you need someone to design the airplane, you need someone to design the interior, etc. etc. etc. and we did then actually, we despite the big light assist small business is so much better. things that really matter like our health, like our survival, we tend to depend on big businesses. most hospitals, most insurance companies most medical device companies are emphatically big businesses. it's good that they are. the notion that small business is inherently more effective shows more integrity, if you remember that story came out

earlier this year about -- it was a neighborhood cemetery where they were burying the people 3-d and abusing the corpses in the chicago area. it was a traditional african-american cemetery. and emmett till had been very different that was a mom-and-pop cemetery. it would be tougher for forced long to get away with that kind of thing. some kind of big cemetery business. the truth is that the prejudice, the light is a small business and actually better than big business is sentimental, stupid, it leads to abominations like antitrust law. we've been close to, if you want to be all the cost, close to a billion dollars a year on the antitrust scan. that means your federal government takes your tax money out of your pocket to punish companies that are too successful. because that's what antitrust is. anybody remember that wonderful suit against microsoft?

that was so important and it was a huge federal focused and joe klein, the clinton administration, they were going to go out and busted bill gates. do you remember what it was they were suing about primarily against microsoft? was at microsoft gouging people by charging too much? microsoft was creating shabby products. what was it they were stewing about? correct. they were giving people stuff for free. internet explorer. in other words, is that they charge too little. they give people too much that they're giving you too good a deal, not to lousy idea. can you imagine? we passed tax payers this justice department, absurd bureaucracy, to go after businesses that want to charge too little. and why? because we have to protect the open market or do you know they had a 16 year, honest to god, 16

year pursued, countless expenditures, against ibm because ibm was shutting out all competitors in the computer business. ibm really dominates the whole computer business today, right? i mean, this is absurd. what happens is yes, you can have companies that will have a short-term prominence, and even dominance. but when you remove regulation and you stop antitrust interference, the natural cycle of the business is that, for instance, if you take a look, and i have a list in my book of the leading computer companies that were in the world at the time of ibm, none of them are among the 10 leading copies today. the economy churns. it changes. the whole ways with antitrust brings me to the fifth and final big lie, which is the one that is most involved a few blocks from here in capitol hill, in the debate on health care and

climate change and everything else. and it's the one that i hope people can come out of here and take late with a mature in this book, feel energized to revive and to challenge and to go bury that lie out in some empty field somewhere with a stake through its heart, and it's the big lie that says that you can trust government to treat people more compassionately, more fairly, then does the private sector. the bureaucracies and nonprofits will more reliably deliver good service to people in everything. van will for-profit corporations. president obama himself expressed something like that. eyesight in the book a graduation speech he gave at arizona state university in tempe, arizona. in the spring of this year. and president of the united states was addressing himself to

business school graduates, people who are being equipped to go out in the free market system and create wealth. and he said many of you will go into our corporate system and follow the well-worn path to your own business and has been. but i know also, many of you and i hope more of you will take a higher path and involve yourself in the nonprofit sector. this is insanity. what is good about not making a profit? seriously. think about this for a moment. the nonprofit sector, where is the nonprofit sector preferable to the for-profit sector? this goes directly to this insane obsession with a public option. the idea that we are going to have a much better in churns company if it's done on a nonprofit basis by the government. that works out well. it worked out well for the highways. worked out well with the light will. worked well with the dmv. where would you rather wait for line for service?

at your local starbucks or to local departmental motor vehicles. come on. guess it's your local starbucks they have to smile and be nice and give you what you want or you're not going to come back. but you have no choice of coming back to the department of motor vehicles or they put you in jail. the problem with the nonprofit sector, meaning the government sector, is they only give you one choice. albany or go to jail. that's the basic choice that government offers the citizens. every once in a couple of years you get a chance to make group decisions and elections and throw the bums out. until the new bums give you the same choice, all they or go to jail. and the difficulty, and the contrast with the private sector is very direct. you make business decisions every day and you have an almost limitless array of choices that go into an american supermarket. you don't like some of the junky food and the non-nursing food. they all have organic sections that appeared as a response to

the marketplace that you didn't need the government to declare were not going to prepare -- i'm not sure organic vegetables are worth it, but some people believe in and you can get it. it's in the market. and this functions remarkably well. if you look, look, talk for a moment nonprofit versus profit-making sector. talk for a moment about education. do you think it is an accident that schools, private schools, catholic parochial schools in particular, spend far less per student than the public schools in washington, d.c., that and i know the chancellor reid is trying to make things better in washington. i know it's happy, but the public schools in washington, d.c., to spend twice, three times as much per pupil as some of the inner-city catholic schools with worse results. with worse results. would anyone come is there anyone here who says, well, i

absolutely care what i get terribly sick i want to make sure i go into a government hospital. right? no. the truth is that look, there are some nonprofit operations that work fine. ike, for 12 years, work for public television. for my sanity. and i often set my 12 years with pbs were three of the happiest weeks of my life. [laughter] >> but anyone who believes that pbs are inherently superior because they are nonprofit because they are dependent upon taxpayer support, anyone who believes the art that is great with taxpayer support, one of the insanity of the obama administration is, i don't know if you've heard this yet but we have a deficit, right, it's a one point for $2 trillion this year. it is a nightmare. the obama administration provided a 20% increase in

funding for the national endowment for the arts. try to imagine what kind of person isn't who says no, i want to listen to music. i want to go to place. i want to read books that are government supported. first of all, none of the most popular or esteemed or worthwhile work would fall into that category. the truth is the profit system works better. because the profit system encourages good behavior. and morality. and i conclude my book with that argument. if you are in business to make a profit, you must take other people into account. you can't order them around. you can't disregard them. you will lose money. i conclude the book with a little chapter called lemonade in the woods which is about a lemonade stand in my

neighborhood. what is it about the lemonade stand everybody gets a warm smile about, little kids, is it the fact kids are making some money? $0.50 here, a dollar here, to get cold lemonade on a hot day? no, it's the building of relationships. that's the essence of what a free market system does. it connects people. it connects people in webs of mutual dependence. and mutual benevolence. there's a quote that i found that i love and i want to leave you with, and i want to conclude with if you don't want to is a quote from andrew carnegie, who was one of the richest americans who ever lived. and somebody who managed to give away, people estimate now about two thirds of all a little leap billions if you put it in today's dollars, that he earned. he created the modern steel industry. maybe if he had been able to stay around the maybe could've stayed to steal into to, who

knows. but in 1896 carnegie looking back on his life wrote a little piece for a kids magazine called youth companion. and he wrote a piece about the first dollar he ever earned at age 12. and he actually saved that doctor. and carnegie wrote, i cannot tell you how proud i was when i received my first week's own earnings. $1.20 made by myself and given to me because i had been of some use in the world. no longer entirely dependent on my parents, but at last, admitted to the family partnership as a contributing member and able to help them. i think this makes a man out of a void sooner than almost anything else, and a real man, too, if there be any term of true manhood in him. it is everything to feel that

you are useful. making a profit, earning money, getting paid to give people something that they want and that they choose is to feel useful. and it is the greatest joy and our country and our nation's future depend on it. thanks very, very much for your attention. [applause] >> absolutely, yes. questions, comments? arguments? quibbles? saw some people shaking their heads with displeasure. >> al milliken, a.m. media. what other changes have you found out about the way liberal arts colleges have dealt towards business in recent years as opposed to the past? >> look, liberal arts colleges

have been by and large hostile to business for a very, very long time. this is nothing new. this goes back, in fact, it goes back to the 1960s. and even to some extent to the 1950s. before then, and one of the things that's happened, there have accident in about books that have been written about this, is the sources of funding for private colleges and universities have changed. and private colleges and universities are far more dependent on government today than they used to be. as you know there are only two very small liberal arts colleges that read fews government a. one was hillsdale college in michigan which i know has had some connection with heritage foundation, and a college in pennsylvania. on the other liberal arts colleges, and putting liberal arts colleges take some kind of form of governmental federal assistance that they all do. and the percentage of money that is paid by governments is extort nearly hi. now what does that create?

that creates a situation in which you are on the nonprofit side of this divide. by the way i think it operates the same way that things operated during those years i worked on public tv. there are very good things about pvs by the way. i don't want to deny, and everyone did what they do something that is beatable and worthwhile. can burn speeds about the national parks was a wonderful piece of television. i'm glad that was created. by the way, with corporate underwriting. the sense that people at a public tv i think is common to what people have in public colleges. which as we are smart, we're people, we earn less than other people and therefore we are entitled to look down on them. there is a sense of the virtue of the nonprofit sphere, as he does i get paid less, that means

that i am better than someone else who makes more. i would argue that logically and empirically, you can make the case that the fact that one earns less money is not a sign of superior virtue or productivity. >> officially, the position of the heritage foundation is pro-nonprofit. [laughter] [inaudible] >> can i jump in? >> certainly. >> one additional lie, a myth really, is business is pro-business and antigovernment. on health care, many businesses,

fighting the sec on one hand and is now endorsed. [inaudible] >> lo, it's a great question. did everyone hear that question? i think the basic thing is in business you tend to look after your self interest. and given the huge power and huge intrusiveness of government today, it does make sense that many businesses, and this is why the entire, aisha the repulsion of the corruption involved with the lobbying world. but i have a different view of it. i don't blame business for lobbying and spending literally billions of dollars every year lobbying for advantage for governmental system to get the

government is going to pick winners and losers, you better darn well make sure that they don't put you on the list of losers of corporate criminals or dismantle your operation, or throw you into jail or do something terrible to you. they have been forced to play ball. i think all of a sudden, if you begin shrinking the size of government and reducing the tremendous interest of this, and the treatment is unproductive intrusiveness of government at so many levels, that all of a sudden you would see that business would become more pro-business than it is. basically it's like paying protection. i think that's part of what you certainly say with this health care situation, which is why so many big healthier companies and insurance companies that bought ferociously against hillary care, this time they determined that the thing was inevitable. i don't think it is inevitable, by the way. it is still not inevitable. they thought the thing was

inevitable and they better play along to make sure that their own particular, meanwhile, not recognize that a certain point i think he did reach a tipping point where the business receives such tremendously heavy hand of regulation and interference, that it's virtually impossible to really back. mr. swanson? >> michael, what are american elementary school children being taught about money, economic of the market? are they being taught anything at all? >> no. they are being taught all the wrong lessons. and they're being taught wrong lessons about almost everything in american history that one of the things that has appalled me, this goes back to the last book, it is now common in elementary school curricula to teach and to learn to lie about smallpox blankets. that americans deliberately infected indians with small box. i really spent a great deal of time and many, many pages in the

"the 10 big lies about america," this never happened. this is all based on three letters that were exchanged, not by americans, but by british officer in 1763 during pontiacs rebellion began it was effectively, would you be nice if we could infect them in these idiot savages, because they were in the midst of being killed. we had a war going on paper there was no evidence that there was in during pontiacs rebellion and during the siege of war, there was no evidence whatsoever that there was actually in the blankets that were given to people or that there was any kind of epidemic or any kind of infection or any kind of disease that spread at that point. going back to what you giving taught about business, with there being taught about business is that business got too big and make people poor, and then teddy roosevelt came in and busted the trust and that business got big again, and then people got poor again, and ben

franklin roosevelt had to come in and save them. i think that a great deal of this, i'm all for spending more time on learning american history. but one of the terrible terrible things is that people in high schools, i know you're asking about elementary schools, our reading howard zinn's a people history of the united states, which is a tissue of lies. about the country. among those lies, the notions of the growth of business makes people poor. no recognition at what henry ford did. i'm not a huge fan of henry ford that i am jewish and henry ford was a world-class anti-semi. over, he changed america vastly for the better. giving people ordinary people, the ability to buy a car a lot of people to go on vacation, and a lot of people take weekends off. i mean, it's incalculable, the gift that was provided there. and virtually every gift that has allowed the middle-class

lifestyle, for better and worse, to emerge with the limbless choices that middle-class people have for this country today has come because of the creative ability of businesses. there is no lesson of any kind of that nature. and i write in the book about, you can go through the typical classes that people have, or even the holidays that they celebrate, we celebrate holidays, little kids learn about holidays. they never learned the pilgrims were part of a corporation. they had invested that they were here to make a profit or so were the people of jamestown. do we have -- and we have time for a few more questions? yes, the lady here. >> my name is emily. i am from england. i would just like to say i think you're a very charming man, but i'm quite concerned that the rhetoric that you are spewing is sort of a symbol of this

corruption and manipulation that the capless system you are protecting essentially, you are coming against these lies i.e. that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and you're completely just throwing out the window the key points i.e. the reality that we have in the u.k., we have an increase in poverty that is protected by what you call the greedy hand of government, what i call the minimum wage, employment laws. you know, you reject the importance of nonprofit organizations and you say places like starbucks, i have the freedom. if i go into starbucks and i said i don't like the way that they manipulate people in other countries around the world, to provide before my cup of coffee, and i said i'm not going to go to starbucks anymore, starbucks don't care. >> are you aware that starbucks has invested i think in $600 million in a global responsibility initiative? you can go into starbucks now and ask for fair trade coffee which is coffee were it is done

together with greenpeace which is one of the sponsored organizations, starbucks is a very left wing cupping. >> i was using starbucks as an example. >> but it is a perfect example. starbucks has responded to the public because they have a certain number of customers who want that kind of insurance. you can go in and pay i think it's about 20 suspects are for a cup of coffee and starbucks is right down the road from where i lived in the corporate headquarters that they have spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on this new initiative to try to address the social justice abroad concerns about their customers did go ahead. >> i i do have a question. essentially, there was a lot of concern that people are now criticizing the ideology of capitalism because of the crisis, and people are saying capitalism is dead and i agree with you. sadly it is alive and well. the thing is, surely it's a sign not that the capless system and a big corporation culture that

we have in america and around the world is becoming more fluid. it is a more sign that people are not buying it anymore. people sort of noticed that women have an economic crisis, the bankers still gets a bonus is that people are so come as you said, the bosses, they don't lose their job that it's the other people. it's about self interest, self-serving people who come from a privileged background and want to entrench their privileges. so my question is surely is a sign that it's not a sign that we have endings in society or the media is writing against capitalism. it's the reality that capitalism is self-serving and doesn't help people. that's a reality that's not coming out. >> okay. can iust ask you one question back. something that you said, he said unfortunately capitalism is alive and well. what system do you think has demonstrated better functioning on behalf of of, say poor

people? [inaudible] >> i'm not going to promote one system i think over another. >> but you said it's unfortuna unfortunate. >> it is. >> because if capitalism were not alive and well we would be living under what kind of system that works better for poor people? >> one that is essentially -- if i could rule the world i would invent something that takes, takes into consideration things like we both agree on, the amazing fact that i have arrived in america yesterday on an airplane. technological innovation is amazing. >> that's because you have such a privileged background. bristol university. >> i do. essentially what the point is, is to take the fact that people have a right to make a profit that people have a right to kind of promote their own interest, but they also have a responsibility to feed that

back. >> one of the things that i hope you will take a look at is there is a great deal of material created right here at heritage foundation to one of the things that heritage does every year that i feature in my book, and that is the index of world economic indicators. it is extraordinary because if you take a look at gross domestic product and you take a look at the fate of the poor people everywhere, poor people do better the more that nations move in the direction of free markets that clinic either keep the two most powerful examples in the world. india and china. old india and china have incorporated and abandoned their socials passed in one hand and a comet passed on the other. and put into operation the idea of private property and private profit. and yes, people looking out after their own self-interest. you see, what i would argue to

you is that it is not evil or wrong for people to look at after their own self-interest. it's beautiful. it's exactly what our country is about and what your country has been about. napoleon put down britain as a nation of shopkeepers and in the shopkeepers actually taught a lesson to his french fried were in. [laughter] >> and they did so based upon the notion that it is not vicious. it is not selfish, it is not evil to one a better life for yourself and for your family. and by creating a better life for yourself and your family, this brings him back to something you said the very beginning of a statement, and by creating a very life for yourself and your family, you are helping the people around you. the notion there is a greater wealth gap in the u.k. today than in the past is not a reflection on the fact that the poor are worse off in the u.k. that in the past, they

emphatically are not. by every measure. >> but it's not a reflection of a system of big business -- >> it is totally a reflection of that because the truth of the matter is yes, you're right, there are people on top who are doing much, much better. but when people on top do better, people on the bottom do better as well. they may not be going up as quickly, but if you look at the way the poor live in our country or in your country, when people were poor like my grandparents were, during the depression, they were really poor. they had food insecurity that they did not have enough to eat. they did not have enough to pay for heating bills. today, robert rector has done tremendous work here in this building on this issue. typical poor family owns at least two dvd players that they own cars. 40 percent of poor households own homes. the way the poor people live in the united states today, it's more luxury is with more

physical comforts and opportunities that middle-class people had in the nice days in the '50s. let me take two more questions and then we're done to. [inaudible] >> there is a far greater obesity problem among poor people in our country that there is a hunger problem. >> hi, i'm chris. i'm surprised i actually did a great with what you said. even though i do disagree with some things. i want to ask you about what you said about antitrust and that you said antitrust is essentially not very important. >> i don't think it's not very important i think it is horribly extractive. i think it is poisonous. i think it is evil. i don't think we should be empowered government to go after companies because they are too successful. >> okay. would you not agree, i mean, in line with mainstream economic theory that monopolies created

deadweight laws and supply being restricted and consumers facing higher prices, so the essence of antitrust is to make sure that monopolies are not created to make sure that moore is applied. so would you not agree that antitrust does have an important role? >> absolutely not. i think american history, get, i don't know the history of antitrust in the u.k. i don't know that. i knew a great deal about the history of antitrust and the united states, and it has always been a disaster. usually for good intentions they will take off after some companies. one of the things that assassin is one of the problems with general motors, right, which is a deeply troubled american corporation and i had this in the book, alfred p. sloan who was the long-term head and creator of general motors, an amalgamation of all companies, was terrified that they're going to go after gm with an antitrust

case that because the gm at one time believe it or not, you do come in, the majority of the world's automotive sales. isn't that amazing when you think about it today. and so he deliberately did not fight back in an aggressive way when the japanese invasion began with japanese cars and others. and there's evidence this was quite deliberate to avoid having to deal with antitrust prosecution that antitrust distorts everything. there's a famous court case involving the u.s. steelcase, which was another antitrust prosecution, to kill the steel business and really did help to kill the steel business in the united states. the idea, the justice douglas talks about in the curse of bigness that there is a curse of bigness for a business to get big that it's a very negative idea. and the notion, you see the whole foods of monopolies which is very much accepted in the 19th century, in a world

economy, global economy, with trade barriers lower and lower, god willing, and i also make the case for that in the book, and with technological innovation being what it is, the possibility of a classical monopoly to dominate any one field ismail. as you see with the case of ibm and all the idiotic antitrust resources. last question. >> hi. allison miller with the arcus foundation. i don't know if you've mentioned this in either the book or the "the 10 big lies about america," but one thing i noticed and i guessed them if you would agree with this or not, some people think without nonprofits and these other organizations and things like the arts would just die out. i just went to new york over the thanksgiving weekend and noticed that the gallery to my left as i was walking and was named after chevrontexaco.

so you talk about any of this in terms of corporations, have you mentioned the thing with starbucks and free trade -- the coffee and all that, but do you mention any of this as far as what corporations do, their charitable giving? >> yes, i do. and i mention it in this book and certainly cervix and the book previous. and this book considerably because when you talk about supporting the arts, just to talk about public television which i know something about, in public television about 14 percent of the total budget of public television, including the stations all around the country, is paid for by government at different levels. about 35 percent of the cost of public television is paid for by corporate donors. corporation support public tv far more than the government does. the arts in the united states are a flourishing business, and one of the things that is stunning is that if you take a

look at the people who attend classical music concert and opera performances, right, you think of very reified small group. if you take the number of people who go every year to a classical music concerts or a chamber of music conference or an opera performance and paid only for it, it is a larger number than all the people who attend a football professional football, baseball or basketball game in this country. if you start putting in nascar, it's more people. [laughter] >> but it's stunning. the arts are flourishing in the united states. in this country, nationwide were almost -- london has tears orchestras. but here in the united states, in small cities, and yes, during the economic downturn a lot of those orchestras have been in trouble and had to cut back. they are suffering. but the truth is, these are institutions that by and large are supported by corporate largess that the whole idea of

creating wealth is if you like the good things come if you like place, if you like concerts. if you like paintings, if you like sculptures, if you like beautiful homes, not of this can exist unless wealth is created and accumulated. and then used wisely by people who actually want to support it the government idea of great artistic expression usually tends to be -- is one of the reasons, one of the things that so peculiar, the national endowment of the art was created in 1967 by president johnson. and if you look at the record of great artistic achievement in the united states since 1967, i think there are very, very few of those achievements that people would associate with federal funding. i greatly appreciate people coming out today. i would be glad to speak to you for a few moments, glad to sign any copies of this book or to answer any questions that you might have. thank you for being part of this audience and part of this

location. and thank you for your interest and support for heritage foundation. [applause] >> i do have to say if anyone wants more information on antitrust, there's a book called incredible bread machine that puts it in just a perfect way, there are three rules in three rows on an antitrust we need to pay attention to. don't charge too much, don't charge too little, and at all costs don't charge the same. but if you can only get one book, get this one. it's on sale in the lobby. is an excellent book. i think michael has done a wonderful job. if anyone wants to see this event, go over the finer points of it, we willave the video on heritage.org that i hope to see you at future events. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> twenty years ago in june of 1989, a small, new, unknown and soon-to-be bankrupt publishing company publishes a small novel by an unknown author from

mississippi. 20 years ago. the book was a time to kill. and at the time, i was -- i was a starving, but i wasn't prospering. [laughter] >> i was privacy law in a small town in mississippi, and training of a better life. at the time i didn't have, i didn't have any money. but i had more than my publisher. [laughter] >> they published a thousand copy and i bought all of them. my skin was a bookie, i was going to buy the book at holzer, seldom every so. i was going to have a big book party at my hometown in the library. this was a town i grew up in, high school, went to college, law school, came back to my hometown that the town had elected me and reelected me to the state legislature. i thought i was pretty popular. my wife was from the.

went to the same high school. our families all the kinds of. so it would be a huge book party. at the local library. and so we actually halt 1000 books down the local library. if you've never seen a thousand books back to. it's a hell of a -- it's a big stack that we have photographs of our two small kids climbing on copies of "a tiime to kill." we had a big part in huge crowds showed up and i was very excited and i signed books and i spoke, and when the party was over, i still owned 882 copies of "a tiime to kill." [laughter] >> and i had an invoice, due to pay for these things, and i panicked. i thought, this, what am i going to do now? i went back the next day to my library, and i said you got any friends around the state, i could take issue on the road. we can load up some books and he said sure, and he got on the phone and started talking to libra's all over the state. i packed a bunch of copies,

boxes of "a time to kill" in my trunk and i took all. i would go to small towns, i can't even remember now. the ladies would make punch and cookies and i would walk in and they had never met an author before. i could play the big shot and talk about the book, and on a good day we would sell 15, 20 copies. that's a big day. there were days we sold none. i've been in bookstores before and i sold zero. and all authors have been through that, sort of good for you at the time, i guess, looking back it seems kind of funny. it wasn't any fun than. it's odd when you go to a bookstore and a mall, they can't wait to see you, the staff, because it's kind of urban have a real author come in and agree to and they can't wait to fuss over you. they're all watching the clock to end a siege at a big table with a stack of two books, and at 4:00 when it starts, they all vanish. [laughter] >> and the clock stops. i mean, it doesn't move.

time freezes. you are just sitting there, you know, waiting for anybody to walk by. if you are ever need a bookstore and you see some poor soul sitting there with a stack of books -- [laughter] >> i don't care if it's cooking, knitting, whatever, whatever it is, please, please buy it. please sit down. [laughter] >> spent some time with them. >> this was a portion of a booktv program. you can view the entire program and many other booktv programs online. go to booktv.org. . .