because of these standards. we downsized the cards. these are all things we should be thinking about in the context of our human environment, the broader natural environment and i hope we continue studying them for long time and making some wise policy decisions. >> lancaster, you are on the air. air. >> caller: we need more informative programs like this. anybody know anything that the cycle of plays -- of police in? is that still applicable? you can't find in the winter and the north grapes or berries or fruits from other than chile or mexico. >> host: cycle of plays in. >> guest: everything we create has a half life and termination point.

various levels of toxicity. it depends on the type of poison, the type of exposure. so all of those things get rolled into an analysis of what the cycle of plays and and we have to avoid the speculation and extrapolation and actually deal with the scientific facts on that. >> linda, 30 seconds the biggest impact of rachel carson and silence spring? >> guest: that she allowed us to think about the future and about our world and about what we were doing to it and putting to it. that we would question authority. that we would ask what are you doing and why is it helpful and who is it going to hurt? and whom is it going to benefit. >> host: linda lear and paul driessen, if you want to learn more about our guests, you can go to lindalear.com and paul's

website is eco-imperialism.com. we've got two -- we've got two more hours of programming coming up. in an hour you're going to see christopher hitchens and george packer discussing the author george orwell. both of those authors have written books about george orwell and we sat them down at "after words" and they discussed george orwell. that's coming up in an hour but first ni on the new book of economics and the 2008 economic situation after the fall. now, here's nicole. >> linda lear is the author of the biography rachel cars: witness for nature. ms. lear wrote the introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of "silent spring." paul driessen is a senior fellow with both the committee for constructive tomorrow and the congress of racial equality.

he has worked as a staffer with the u.s. senate and the interior department. for more information, visit lindalear.com and eco-imperialism.com. >> up next, reporter, documentary film correspondent and author t.r. reid joins booktv for a three-hour "in depth" interview.

you've written by healthcare, international relations, ski resorts, the roman empire. how do you choose your topics? >> guest: well, partly -- i guess what i write for money. dr. johnson famously said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. i don't even succeed. some of my books have really flopped but -- i try to find a topic that looks complicated but can be penetrated with some work. and then i try to explain it in an engaging, understandable way. it's hard work. but that's what i try to do. i try to find something where people say, oh, god i'll never figure how the how a calculator can add 2 plus 2.

and that's what i explain to people. that's what i'm looking for. >> host: what book has flopped? >> guest: oh, let's see. which of my books has flopped. the first time i brought out -- i wrote this book called "the chip" it's about the two americans who invented the microchip and basically they changed the daily life of the world. they are thomas edison and alexander graham bell. they were living in america when i wrote this book and nobody had ever heard of them. and i thought, boy, here it is. everyone would want to know that we america gave this great creation to the world and it was two americans. one guy from iowa. one from kansas. nothing. the book got very good reviews. it made a bunch of those, you know, best 10 books of the year kind of thing. and didn't sell a whip. i thought i was going to get rich on this book. nothing. but very good reviews and everything. and that book came out around 1985 or '6. >> host: 1986.

>> guest: '86. yeah, and my wife and i kept saying to each other well, you know, it was a decent book but it was ahead of its time. that was before most people had a computer so they weren't into microchips, you know? in 2000, i was living in london and my editor called me up from random house and said hey, this is amazing. that book is selling like mad. it's 14 years later and we're really going to get going on this book. it was basically the same book but all of a sudden people were interested. what happened? well, jack killby won the nobel prize in 2000 and americans were interested in him and there was my book sitting there. here's what happened, i went to stockholm with jack and his family. he's just a wonderful, wonderful man in every way and he got the nobel prize in physics. if you give the nobel prize in physics the only requirement you have to attend this fancy dinner with the king.

and you have to give a lecture, a nobel prize lecture and jack gave his lecture and some physicist in stockholm introduced him and said this is the man who gave us the calculator, the computer, the internet, the digital tv, the cell phone, the ipod, blah, blah, blah. because he invented the basic tool for all that and jack kilby, what a wonderful guy, here's what he said, i hear that a lot that i created the whole digital world. i invented one little part of it. it was all the other engineers who made the thing work. he said whenever i hear that, that i created everything, he said, it reminds me of the time there were a beaver and a rabbit who were sitting beneath boulder dam and the rabbit looks up at this massive structure dam and says to the beaver, did you build that. the beaver said, no, but it's based on an idea i had once.

that was jack kilby. anyway, so at that point, i rewrote the book. we brought out the book "the chip" again in 2001. with sadly reporting the death of bob noyce, one of the two ventres. -- that book is selling pretty well in the second version but still i wouldn't say it achieved its goal which was to remind americans that it was a guy from kansas and a guy from iowa who invented the microchip and changed the world. i'll tell you an interesting story, peter, i was on a talk show talking about that book, a radio show -- this is how you sell books. and a very funny guy, woody page was the host and he was kind of ragging me, you know, and he said ah, come on why would you write a book about the invention of the microchip. nobody knows who invented the microchip. yeah, that's why i wrote this book. nah, nobody heard of these guys.

if anybody can call this show in the next hour and tell me who invented the microchip, i'll buy them dinner for two. says woody page, right. and kind of this smirk on his face, and 10 seconds later the phone rings. a caller calls up and it's this very polite 10 or 11-year-old kid, very polite. he said, well, sir, i know who invented the microchip, sir. it was robert noyce and jack kilby and he got it right and woody paged to buy this kid dinner. it was my son. it was my son who called the show. so at least he knew. so it was a great moment for me. so i would say -- you know, i worked hard on that book. i think it's a good book. i'm proud of it. but in terms of achieving its goal, which was to let americans know that bob kilby -- bob noyce i'm sorry, and jack kilby

changed the world never succeeded. >> and bob went on to found what company? >> intel. he founded intel. and made hundreds of millions of dollars. he was an early investor in apple. he was just a very, very smart engineer and businessman. jack kilby never made a ton of money off the microchip but you know what? i don't think that ever mattered to jack. jack was an engineer. he defined an engineer's job as identifying an important problem and solving it. and he did. jack came up with the guts, the idea that made the current digital age possible. i think jack always knew that he had taken on a very important idea and come up with a good solution, and that was more important to him than money. >> host: how revolutionary was the calculator back in the early '70s? >> guest: well, there were desktop calculators at that time. this is kind of ringing in my ear. can we fix it? >> host: yeah. >> guest: there were desktop

calculators at the time. they were really big and they had an arm like a slot machine and you typed in the numbers. to have any device, a computer that you could hold in your hand -- that was really an amazing breakthrough. i think the most important application -- first application of the microchip -- the microchip -- until the microchip came along, there were computers in the world, but they were so big they filled an entire building. the one -- there was a big computer in philadelphia. and whenever they turned on the power for it, lights dimmed all over the city because the thing consumed so much power. it was just huge. and expensive. you couldn't proceed more than 10 or 12 of those in the entire world. and jack reduced the size of that computer to -- you know, you could have a computer that size in your watch today with no

problem, whatsoever. that power. so that was really the revolutionary breakthrough. they made possible the digital age. and the first really important application jack and bob invented the microchip in '58 and '59, and lo and behold in 1961, along comes jack kennedy who says i want to send a rocket to the moon by the end of this decade. you couldn't do that because you couldn't fit that era's computer into the nose cone of a rocket but with the microchip suddenly you could deceive a computer powerful enough to steer a rocket to the moon. and that whole mission would have been impossible without the invention of the microchip. >> host: where did the phrase t.r. reid "united state of europe" come from >> guest: winston churchill said

who was the ex-prime minister of britain. he led their country in the defeat of nazis in victory through world war ii and three weeks later he lost the national election. he was now the post -- the ex-prime minister, and he was a big thinker. and he was looking at europe. and you could see, you know, the iron curtain had fallen across europe. the nations of europe were spending more money on armies than they were on rebuilding their shattered economies and their shattered cities. and you could see that europe -- europe had already gone to war three times since 1870 and you could see they were going to do it again. those same countries were going to get into another war. and churchill said and several other visionaries -- but he was one of several visionaries we got to stop this. hey, we can't go on. and he said we need to build a

new europe -- we need to build a kind of america. and we need a "united state of europe" and one currency and they have a parliament and a president. they have a lot of the accouterments of a national and he said we need to build a new europe -- we need to build a kind of america. and we need a "united state of europe" and one currency and they have a parliament and a president. they have a lot of the accouterments of a national state. >> host: and your subtitle is "the new superpower and the end of american supremacy." you wrote this in 2004. does that hold true today? >> guest: well, i think the supremacy of the american dollar, the almighty dollar is coming to an end. i think you can see the dollar losing its clout in global markets.

and one reason is there's now a competitor to the dollar and that's the european euro. it's been a very, very successful currency. in my book "united state of europe" i have a lot of fun quoting brilliant american experts who say the euro will never work. you know, europeans will never really give up their francs and their marcs and their lira but it worked. the day the euro came out in -- january, 2002, you could buy one euro for 89 cents. today it would cost $1.35 to buy one euro. it's been the strongest currency in the world. in some ways, europe is the biggest single market in the world without any question. vastly bigger than china. they buy 11 to 12 times as much from us as china does. yeah, in many ways it has this

united europe has achieved some level of commercial supremacy in the world. and the europeans make the rules now because of such an important market. the europeans make the rules that govern global commerces. i point out in that book and you go down in the liquor store and buy a bottle bourbon, that is a quintessential american thing. it's 72-centiliter bottle. americans clamour to buy their centiliter no that's the europeans who said they want that marketing on every market and because they have the market clout of this united europe, we have to do that. skippy peanut butter tell us how many milliliters in the jar. do you think americans care about that? but europeans do. >> host: what's the importance of may 9th and what is generation e? >> guest: yeah.

may 9th is sort of the fourth of july of the "united states of europe". the europeans celebrate treaty that brought together the first six countries into a sort of common government. and it's since grown to 27 countries and about 500 million people. and so the europeans -- they're looking for ways to remind people in germany, in finland,

in portugal, in ireland that they all belong to one place. again, they looked over at the united states and they see we all gather on the fourth of july and shoot off fireworks and eat hot dogs and listen to politicians giving long speeches. and so on may 9th, the europeans celebrate europe day all over the place. and they eat hot dogs and they listen to speeches and they have fireworks and concerts and stuff like that. obviously, it's not -- it doesn't have the cultural power of the fourth of july. but it is -- it is their version. and it's a tool for bringing all these 27 different european countries together into a single union. >> host: and generation e? >> guest: well, generation e i think was -- is in my book about europe. and my argument was that europeans say under 35 or 40 these young europeans are the most united. they are the ones who have the strongest feeling that they are europeans rather than finns or astonians or poles or spaniards if you follow me. if you go up to somebody at 72 and say where are you from, she will say i'm from france or i'm from italy but if you go up to somebody 22 they'll say i'm a european who lives in italy. that was the argument. i think there's a lot of

validity in that but it's not as true as i stated in the book. if i were to fix the book, i would downplay the generation e. it turns out these younger citizens of the united europe still feel that they're astonians or finns or dutch. and the kind of proof of it was when they had the referendum a few years ago on a treaty -- on a european constitution, the rule was it had to pass -- it had to be approved by every country. and it failed in france and in the netherlands. two of the original six countries who formed this united europe. that was kind of surprising. but the really surprising thing for me, the guy who wrote all about generation e is that the younger french and dutch people voted against the constitution more than older people did. do you think -- is it fair to

say i was wrong about generation e, yeah, i think that was fair. i was wrong. >> host: and to look at the european-u.s. relations through the eyes of some brits, who are the laudbergers? >> guest: the laudbergers that's a typical american family, peter. they used to appear on a morning -- a funny morning tv show in britain called "the big breakfast." it was their version of "good morning america" or something. and it would have news. and it would have entertainment news. it was a lot like our morning shows except they also had these skits in which -- in which these two very, very fat people -- they wore michelin man fat suits and they were overweight and holding onto guns. the laudbergers lived in a trailer somewhere -- it sounds like texas.

he always had a stetson hat on his head and, of course, they're always wearing american flag t-shirts over their huge fat chests. this is the version they like to think of as america. and the laudbergers -- of course, they're unemployed. on the wall of their trailer they had two pictures. one was george w. bush because for all of europe he was kind of the epitome of all the problems with america that they could see. was the picture of the woman who and the other person they had sued mcdonald's and won a million dollars because the coffee was too hot, which they all think is classically american. that we're always looking for a way to sue somebody and get rich. so the laudbergers were kind of this comic epitome of all the things that europe loves to hate about america. >> host: in "confucius lives next door," t.r. reid, you talk about the asian century and the asian miracle.

what do you mean by that? >> guest: well, the asian miracle obviously had been an economic term. the asian miracle was the emergence of these poor, and i mean poor east asian nations, to become global economic powers. and the paradigm case as i say in that book was japan. japan was an incredibly poor country after world war ii. japan was one of the poorest countries in the world. and no resources. no coal, no oil, no steel, nothing. no uranium. they don't even have enough land to grow their own food but the japanese created through hard work -- created the second richest economy in the world. they have a higher per capita income than we do on the small island nation with no resources. so that's considered japan's post-war miracle and it was replicated in other asian

countries, taiwan, malaysia, south korea also went from being really poor countries, maybe rating 100 to 150th in the world in per capita income and today those east asian countries rate in the top 10 or 15 in per capita income. that's called the asian economic miracle. we're now seeing it very large in china. china is having its own economic miracle becoming an export power. in my book, "confucius lives next door," i wrote about a different miracle in asia and ea asia which is the social miracle. and here's what that is. that is that those east asian countries, japan, south korea, taiwan, et cetera, have about one 100th of the murder rate of the united states. they don't have a lot of robbery. they don't have muggings. you can leave your bike out on the street and it doesn't get stolen. they don't even have gafiti. -- graffiti.

1% of the babies are born to single mothers. the numbers is 32% in america. very few divorces, et cetera. in other words, in terms of sort of basic social statistics, they're pretty successful. and so i wrote about the asian social miracle and how do you do this? how do you get a country one 100th the murder rate as the united states. that's why i wrote a book about about the asian social miracle. guess what the title gives it away. it's called "confucius lives next door." and my argument is because they inculcate their basic social values so well, socially those countries work pretty well. >> host: welcome to "in depth." this is booktv's monthly series with one author looking at his

or her body of work and this month it's t.r. reid, the author of six books in english and three in japanese. he's been a long time "washington post" reporter. he's lived all over the th world. he's covered many topics. we're going to put the numbers up in case you'd like to participate in our conversation with mr. reid. 202 is the area code. -- is the area code. the numbers are listed on the screen. mr. reid is joining us from the mountain time zone in denver. you can also send us an email at booktv@c-span.org or send a tweet twitter.com/booktv and we'll try to get as many of those as possible. re arer. rd's books. "confucius lives next door" we talked a little bit. united states of europe. "congressional odyssey."

this came from a series of "washington post" that mr. reid wrote back in the late '70s, early '80s. "this is the chip." his most recent "the healing of america". and my personal favorite, "ski japan!". to look at "the healing of america", what's the bismarck here? >> guest: i tried to figure out why it is that all the other industrialized democracies, countries like us, spend half of us. they're not all socialized medicine. some countries do have big government providing the care

and paying the bills but a lot of industrialized democracies cover everybody with private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance. and the paradigm case of that would be germany where the national healthcare system was actually created in 1883 otto bismarck. he created this model of healthcare that's used in a lot of countries, which i in my book call the bismarck model. many economists call it. here's what happens, you go to private doctors. you go to private hospitals. and to pay your medical bills you have a private insurance company. and you split the cost of insurance between the employer and the employee. if you lose your job, then government picks up the slack of the employer and pays that share of the premiums. so 150 million americans are on the bismarck model of health insurance. the reason i emphasize this, it's used in a lot of countries. let's see, germany, switzerland,

netherlands, france to a degree, japan. and it covers everybody but it's absolutely it's not socialized medicine. in "the healing of america", some countries are less socialized than others. in switzerland and germany they don't have medicare. people stay with the private insurer cradle to grave in the bismarck model but that's just one of the models of healthcare i found around the world. but i emphasize it in the book because it's not socialized medicine. it's the private sector covering everybody. >> host: and, in fact, from "the healing of america", five common american myths about healthcare systems abroad. it's all socialized medicine out there. they ration care with waiting lists and limited choice. they're wasteful systems run by bloated bureaucracies. health insurance companies have to be cruel. those systems are too foreign to work in the usa.

anything you'd like to add to that? >> guest: you know, i think -- those are all myths. that's what we've been told about healthcare overseas. and as i said, it's not true. there's a germ of truth in all that. have you heard these horror stories about long waiting times in canada? they're true. they have long waiting times for elective care in canada. and to some degree in britain. but many countries, germany, japan, france have shorter waiting times than the u.s. for all medical procedures. and they still cover everybody. and they still spend less. they limit choice. no, sir. no, sir. in france, germany, japan they don't have anything like this in network and out of network or preauthorization that we have. you can go to any doctor, any hospital, any chiropractor, any healer, any lab in the entire country and insurance has to pay the bill. usually within two or three days.

so a lot of the stuff we've heard about how healthcare is terrible overseas is not true. >> host: we have an email here, t.r. reid, from homer. my question for t.r. reid is, why has the international comparison been almost completely absent from the political debate over healthcare reform? >> guest: boy, hey, i wrote a whole book on this topic. what is the answer to that? why don't people realize that the germans have dealt with the same problems we have. they cover everybody. they spend a lot less and they did it in the private sector. as i say, a less socialized system than we have. why aren't we looking at that? it's mysterious to me. i point out in this book that some countries that fairly recently changed their system to get universal coverage. and they looked around the world. the taiwanese set up a committee to look at healthcare systems around the world. same thing i did in my book. in the end taiwan chose the canadian model of healthcare.

but it didn't have to. why aren't we looking? i would like to know the answer to that. and i think the answer to that would be, look, healthcare in america is a $2.5 trillion industry. one dollar out of every 6 we spend we spend on healthcare and that means there are a lot of corporations that are huge winners, that are doing great out of our current system and they're going to resist any change. i think if americans were aware that other countries manage to cover everybody with less waiting and spend less, they might want to change our system to be more like those and the kind of industrial interests making money off our current system don't want people to make that change. >> host: dr. abigail revealed "the healing of america" in september of 2009. she wrote, a chronic shoulder

>> host: and to follow that up from allen from denver, colorado. can you give a brief overview of problems with healthcare access you have experienced throughout your travels? and what are the major things we can learn from other countries? >> guest: i think -- yeah, i thank you for reading that

review in the "times." you know, an author you work forever on these books. i worked years on this book and you throw it out there and you just hope that some reviewer will get it and understand it. and this book has gotten really good reviews. but that review i got in the "new york times," geez, it was marvelous. that woman understood my book. and she understood it was an optimistic book. because i say, we could fix our system. we could cover everybody at reasonable costs with great results. if we were to learn some lessons from other countries. geez, i'm glad you read that. it's a nice memory to open the "new york times" to find somebody who really understood what i was trying to do. experiences we've had overseas, i've had pretty -- overall, very good healthcare in other countries. but i'll tell you something we found in britain, which i think is a bad idea. in britain they have this national health service. it's free. you're sick. you go to the doctor. they treat you. you pay nothing. there's no co-pay. there's no deductible. there's no premium. you pay taxes and the taxes are high. but it nets but you're not paying any healthcare premium. they pay half as less per capita

for healthcare in britain. but they have this rule that the same doctor who treats you in the free national health service can also treat you for pay in the same office, you know, on a different day. and that gives the doctor an incentive to say, oh, gee, if i see you on the nhs it will take three weeks. i've got a long waiting list and this happened. my family had a knee problem. went into the orthopod and he said it will take me weeks in the nhs but if you come in privately come in saturday and we'll take care of it. i think it's a bad idea. most countries make doctors choose. you can either be in the public system or you can bill privately but britain lets them do both and i always thought that was a mistake. i wouldn't repeat that mistake in america. but i have to say, generally overall, i liked the british system of healthcare. we got good care. we generally didn't have -- most

of the time didn't to have wait any longer than we would in the u.s. and it's free. there's no bills. and if there's no bill, then you don't have that three-month fight with the insurance company over who's going to pay the bill. i have to say as a father, a husband, and a patient, i liked the british system. it worked fine. >> host: email from heather did the demographic of other western countries make it easier for them to establish universal healthcare health insurance. i'm not referring to just racial or ethnic demographics but political economic religious and other differences that exist in the u.s. at a greater level than in other countries? >> guest: it's a very -- it's a valid -- it's a good question. i don't buy that, no. i don't think population diversity makes it any harder to provide universal healthcare. i just can't see why it would. i don't buy that. and anyway, some of the countries that i looked at in my book are more diverse than we

may think. i'll give you an example. the netherlands they cover everybody at reasonable cost using private insurance. the netherlands has about 16 million people and a million don't speak dutch. a million of them came within the last 10 or 12 years and they're mainly north african muslims. they're not christians or dutch-speakers and yet they are covered by the system, too. the system covers everybody. so i think -- i see the question. it's a legitimate question. i don't buy it. i think racially and ethnically and economically diverse populations can -- countries can cover everybody. >> host: t.r. reid, just to kind of rejigger that question a little bit, there's some political problems with the muslim population or ethnic populations in europe now; is that correct? you write about that in "united states of europe"? >> guest: all the countries have

a nationalist party like senator tancredo. i don't think -- i don't think those parties have won an election in any country except there was one in the netherlands where they temporarily won. they won for about six months. but these parties are there. and the coming in of people, particularly, into this new wealthy european union, trying to get jobs and make money has become a source of tension in a lot of european countries. it's always been a source of tension for japan. just as it is in the united states. i think the striking thing is, when it comes to healthcare, even though illegal immigration is a serious issue in those countries, it has nothing to do with healthcare.

if you live in that country and you get sick, they treat you. now, it may be that once you get out of the hospital the justice minister is going to try to kick you out and send you back home. but as long as you're there, they figure everybody should have access to the healthcare system. but you're right, immigration is of a hot political issue in a lot of european countries. >> host: new york city is our first call for t.r. reid. stan, please go ahead with your question. >> caller: yeah. you've written about the u.s., europe and asia and earlier on you talk about the asian social miracle. in the industrialized countries in east asia have lower rates of social problems of crime and illegitimacies. does this apply to europe and the united states and what could the european social model learn from the asi one? >> guest: there's a really good question. isn't there also a european social model? yes, as a matter of fact there is.

and it involves i'd say a stronger reliance on government than we have to provide the kind of basic elements of human life. and most european countries -- well, certainly everybody is covered by the healthcare system. they're not all free. some of them are. but they are much cheaper than ours and they cover everybody and most european countries, education is free. kindergarten through college. most european countries provide pretty generous retirement pensions provided by the government, things like that. so, yeah, europe, too, has -- the european social model is more commuitarian. it's expensive in tax terms but europeans put up with higher tax rates, you know, the sales tax in sweden is 25% on everything you buy. because they feel they're

getting something back from it in this kind of commuitarian set of comfortable benefits pouring out from government including healthcare. so, yeah, i think that's a very good point. that i wrote about the european -- the asian social model but europe also has its own social model. and in terms of crime, most european countries have lower rates of violent crime than the united states. some of them have pretty high rates of robbery, of car theft. most european countries have pretty much higher rates of illegitimate birth of children born to single mothers than the united states. to some degree that number is a phony number because what's happening in europe now is, you know, they don't go to church that much anymore. people don't have -- stick to traditional religion and, therefore, these young couples

live together and have children but never taking the step of getting married. there's lots of couples that we might consider a good faithful couple that are just not married. and, therefore, when the child is born to that couple, look, there's a dad in the home and everything. but it's rated, you know, statistically it's born to a single mother 'cause the parents weren't married. that's really striking. america is what, 32, 33% children born of single mothers and many in 50% to single mothers. so the statistics don't look as good as east asia but there are explanations for this. >> host: including crown prince hakan of norway -- >> guest: he's living with his partner. many of them are faithful, loving couples who will stay together for a long, long time or forever but they just didn't take the step of getting married

and, therefore, when you do these things statistically with the kind of standard statistical model it turns out a lot more babies are born to single mothers but in many cases there is a dad in the home. and they're living like a married couple. >> host: mark in tampa, florida, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. as an admirer of confucius myself i find those differences in crime statistics to be remarkable. my question is, how can america better introduce or increase the values of virtue? >> guest: yeah, i think that's a great question. look, i became a huge admirer of confucius. he's one of the greatest teachers in history of ethics and decent conduct. i rate him with christ and thomas jefferson and jon stewart mill in teaching how to run a government and how to live with each other. socrates, christ, confucius they're all in that category of

great, great human teachers. the striking thing about the confucius teaching may be exotic to americans but a lot of them are not. a lot of them -- a lot of the rules that confucius taught his followers are very familiar to us. in 500 b.c., in 500 b.c. confucius was asked by one of his students once, can you give me basic rules so that i'm dealing with other people fairly in any situation? and confucius' rule is, do not impose on others which you would not have them impose on you? and in china this is called the golden rule. there's nothing exotic or strange that. one time a student asked confucius -- he's said master, you've been teaching us about ethical conduct and how to deal decently with other people but could you reduce it down to one word and confucius is such a

nice go ahead, instead of getting mad about this. he said well, if i had to, i guess i would use -- i'd pick the word compassion and empathy for thinking about what the other person's state is like. that's totally -- that's christian. that's western. that's totally our values. so i argue in this book that many of the values in these confucius societies, the cultural values are largely the same. and the difference is they have inculcated these values better than we have. they constantly remind people. they put confucius' teachings on the wall of the subway station in tile. and they're there forever. and they put up big signs over the highway let's drive in a friendly manner to watch out for others. stuff like that. they're constantly teaching. they teach in the schools. they teach in the companies so my argument has been, let's do what the confucius countries do, a, let's settle on what our basic cultural values are and i think we know those and b, let's

remind each other what they are. >> host: frank gibney reviewed "confucius lives next door" in 1999, this is his review. le >> guest: yeah, you know, that was frank gibney who's a great student of east asia. and he also gave -- he gave that book a good review. that's another good review. authors tend to remember the good reviews. you know, peter, we also remember the bad reviews. i think i can remember every bad review i have got. yeah, he's right. i mean, at the end of the book, "confucius lives next door"

where i make this argument that there are cultural explanations for why the asians have these good social statistics. i have a chapter in that book called "what's wrong with the thesis of this book" and i go through all the problems because it's not as simple as i just laid it out for you in a minute or two here. and there are difficulties with all these. and i think gibney is exactly right. anybody who's lived in japan knows, look, they don't murder each other. they don't steal cars from each other and stuff like that. they don't put graffiti on the wall but, man, some of their politicians and businessmen are as corrupt as anything you will ever see in the west. some of them are really on the take. how do i explain this in the context of the confucian social society? and in the end have that book, i say i can't. i don't know why they are so corrupt. he's right. and i did put that in there. the thesis it's a little too simplistic so i wrote a whole chapter.

>> host: from "confucius lives next door" the u.s. depicted in >>ue guest: no, that's true. you know, and as we were talking about the laudbergers earlier. the europeans also like to dump on our country. and i think -- i think part of that -- i've always thought part of that is jealous. look, we're big and rich and successful. we're the most innovative country in the world. we're certainly the strongest military country in the world. and it's kind of inevitable that others are going to resent that.

and one way they do it is they look for the problems in our society and magnify them. and i used to say in asia and in europe, you know, it is only reason you know about these problems in american society is 'cause we write about them and talk about. we are trying to fix them ourselves. that's how they know. it's an open society and you can find the warts in our society. and they love writing about them. partly because those problems are there and partly because i think there is some resentment of how successful our country has been in the world. even in countries we've helped there's this kind of resentment of the fact that they had to accept help from the united states. >> host: vince in franklin, tennessee. you're on the air with t.r. reid. >> caller: hey, thank you for c-span. it's always great. i just wanted to make three quick observations and have mr. reid respond.

first of all, the homicide rate among blacks and hispanics in the united states, they commit about 84% of the homicides. and whites have a homicide rate about on par with europe. so there's a lot of cultural aspects to that. secondly, on the term per capita income, if you look at the number of hours americans have to work to provide the necessities and luxuries of life, it is far less hours than anywhere else on the world. so per capita income may say something but when you look at how long americans have to actually work for goods and services, it's far less hours than in the rest of the world. and finally, i would ask mr. reid, which do you think is the greater value, economic freedom or political freedom? and i'll wait his responses. >> guest: yeah, thank you. look, i would -- i want to live in a politically free country where i can say and think what i

want to. and i'm allowed to vote and choose my leaders. to me that's the highest measure of freedom in any society. it's got to be there. but i would argue to you that economic freedom and political freedom go together. that is free markets kind of inevitably lead to free political institutions. if people see they have a choice at the city market then they want a choice at city hall and the person making their laws. i think those go together. i saw this very acutely when i was covering east asia. what happened is south korea is a fabulous example of this. south korea was a military dictatorship. it was an ally of the united states. we always shored up their military dictators. and in 1987, south korea was becoming a rich country. and people poured out in the streets by the millions and demanded free elections. they demanded free elections.

and it wasn't just left wing students, you know, these were brokers in 3-piece suits and doctors in their white coats. and they got it. they got it. the military dictator had to step down. and they elected a president. he had been a general but as a matter of fact he ran as a civilian. they gave him one 5-year term and i always thought the great moment in the history of democracy in south korea was in 1992. i was over there covering it and the president was elected and he was part of these military dictatorships and he said yeah, i'm done. goodbye. have another election and elect another president. it really became a demographic society. it was their economic society with free markets that led them to demand free governing

principles and if you think about that model, you got to wonder what's going to happen in china. china has created this hugely successful basically free market capitalist economy but it's still a fascist, a dictatorial communist state imposing rules on the people. and you got to wonder how long people will put up with that. but i would -- among -- given the choice between those two, i would prefer political freedoms but i think political freedom leads to economic bream. -- freedom. now, the concept that americans work less for our income than other countries, i don't think that's true. no, i don't think that's true. americans are among the hardest working people on earth. i think the japanese, the taiwanese and the chinese work longer hours than we do, but all the european countries work vastly less. in france everybody takes six weeks of vacation in most of europe they take five weeks vacation and they really take them. it's not like in america where

you build it up for 30 years in the bank. no. people really take vacation. and yet their lifestyle is not exactly like ours. their houses aren't as big. but they have a very comfortable upper class -- you know, a middle class lifestyle working vastly shorter, fewer hours than we do. so the argument that we work less to get the same stuff, no, i don't buy that. in fact, if you go to europe, people always ask you, why do you work so hard? why do you americans work so hard? and no wonder your rate of heart attack and cardiovascular disease is so hard. you're under total stress. you're working all the time. that's what they say. i don't accept your suggestion that we make as much money by working less. we make more money than other countries but we also work harder. >> host: this is booktv's "in depth." our guest is author t.r. reid. the next call for him comes from billingham, washington, good morning. >> caller: good morning.

my question is do you believe the united states of europe could progress into a united states of south america, united states of africa, united states of asia, et cetera? and then from that point on into a world government where the countries becoming states and then counties within those states based on our form of government? i personally believe that does it bring world peace and bring about equality and trade, environmental control and living standards throughout the world? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: yeah, well, william, the europeans totally agree with you. they think this new model, the european union of the united states of europe is the model for the modern world for countries to live together despite their differences and not go to war. that's the reason they created the european union was that they didn't get into another world war. they already had two of them in one century. and it's worked.

i mean, the countries of europe are not going to go to war with each other. they're too united now. they're too interconnected. and so the europeans feel they created a model for other parts of the world, the mideast is the one they always talk about. when i was in -- i once went to a seminar at oxford university about exporting the european union model. and they were talking, you know -- they liked the term "the united states of europe" that resonates of people and they wanted to have a united states of america and i don't mean our country, north america, but, you know, canada to chile. they wanted to have a single american union. and they were actually talking about that we would accept an american-wide currency called the peso. can you imagine americans giving up their dollar to spend pesos? i don't think it's likely to happen but the europeans really like this idea. that in other parts of the

world, and particularly other parts of the world with a lot of tension and a history of warfare, the european union model could work. and whatever you say about it has definitely worked in europe. they've now gone 70 years without a war. and they're not going to have a war in the mainland of europe anymore. >> host: and, in fact, in the united states of europe, t.r. reid spends quite a bit of time january 1st, 2002, the conversion of the euro. here's a tweet that we got from jamie crist. how stable can the euro be about it covers countries like germany and greece? >> guest: yeah, that's a very good question. when you create a currency union, that is when different countries or states share a single currency there's something called a credible currency union. that is are the countries closer together in government terms and in economic terms that you can have a single currency. and this question is being

challenged right now in europe. it's an argument that greece never should have been admitted to the euro in the first place because it never met the basic tests that europe set for a healthy economy to be in the euro. but the answer to that is, look, there are huge differences. there are huge economic differences between oregon and alabama. and there are many times when alabama or arkansas has a 10, 11, 12% -- or michigan, for example, 12% uninsurance rate and other states have a 5 or 6% unemployment rate, i'm sorry. michigan is 12% unemployment. colorado is about 7%. other states are at 5% and yet we all use the dollar and we kind of absorb these changes. and this is the problems facing greece, portugal, and to some extent spain right now it creates the same kind of challenge for the euro.

my bet is the euro is going to survive. and the reason the euro is going to survive is the rich countries of europe, germany, france, et cetera, belgium want to see the euro survive, they will do it to keep it alive. >> host: bill from washington, you're on with t.r. reid? >> caller: hi, mr. reid. i've enjoyed your analysis today. going back in your "the healing of america" you go over how miserable we do have it here in this country for how long we've had it. and we've come up to the point where -- you know, even in this crisis, you know, fiscally and healthcare wise, the government still can't come to a plan that's obviously the best -- the universal system. we shouldn't be arguing, you know, what is there. in these bills right now. we should be arguing which type

of system should we be going through morally fiscally it is the best system right now. even when the majority of americans support it, we still can't get our government to do it. so do you think this story -- when we look back in the history books we're going to see that this story is about -- and you came up just short in your first answer today in the email. will this story be about really the corruption in government that prevented this from happening, the obvious even in a crisis situation, even when the majority of americans support it? will the story be about the corruption in the american government, you know, the type of corruption that, you know, we only apportion to third world dictatorships? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: look, i'm convinced -- i'm 100% convinced we're going to get to universal coverage. to me the goal of a healthcare system should be universal coverage at reasonable cost. i know we could get there. come on. all the other countries have done it, as i say, all the time. if france can do this, the united states of america can do it. i know we could. and i think we will.

i think the american people eventually will demand that we cover everybody. i argue in my new book, "the healing of america" -- i argue that if americans knew how cruel our system was, we'd fix it. i don't think americans want to live in a country where 20 to 25,000 of our neighbors die every year of treatable diseases because they can't afford to see a doctor. and this happens in the richest country in the world. the national academy of sciences did the big study on this. i think it's very clear. nobody disputes these data. do you think americans want to live in a country where 800,000 of us go bankrupt every year, lose everything we've ever saved just because we happen to get sick or got hit by a car or something? ..

will demand and get to universal coverage at reasonable cost. i don't think we're going to do it this year. but i think americans eventually will do it. and one of the reasons i wrote the book was to say, hey, it's not as hard as you may think. a lot of other countries have gotten there. and we could too if we were willing to open our eyes and take some lessons from other countries. >> host: okay. we've gotten about 20 emails in the >> host: we've got about 20 e-mails in the last 10 minutes. asking for your assessment of the current health care debate and the current bill and president obama's involvement. >> guest: well, the bills pending in xingu now, the bill the president obama has summarized in his 11 page statement, look, it's better than what we've got now. it would outlaw some of the most

reprehensible practices of the american insurance industry that you would get more people covered which is what the insurers need if they're going to stop these awful practices. and it does have some level of cost control. it doesn't go far enough by my standards. i think the goals should be universal coverage at reasonable cost, and our bill covers a lot more people. in 2019 it was to leave 20 million americans without insurance coverage, and it doesn't have enough control on costs to go to step to a reasonable level. but definitely better than what we've got now. so in that regard, it is a desirable bill. i think -- i've been pretty critical of the obama people. i don't think they've done a good job of selling their bill. as a matter of fact, if you look at american attitudes since last july, every month the percentage of people supporting obama care, or the obama, the democrats bill and should has gone down.

as the republicans keep winning out, it is now a minority of people support the bill. most people are against it. so i don't think they've done a good job of pointing out the difficulty in our current system of pointing out what could be done, but i think the current, the current bill is definitely better than what we've got. it just doesn't get us far enough. i think, people asked me this all the time. i think it's likely that we will get to universal coverage in america, state-by-state. and in my book, i talk about some countries were universal coverage started on a regional basis and then the other provinces or states or regions saw that it worked and adopted it. i think that could happen in america. if we, cuba, just as louis brandeis of the supreme court always said, the state should be the laboratories for policy experimentation. i think if five or six or eight states try to find ways to cover

everybody, and two or three of them make it work, then the rest of us can copy. i think that's probably the model we will get to, used to get to universal coverage. because i think what we've learned this year is the interests making big money off of our current system are too strong, are so strong that they're able to prevent really comprehensive change in watching him. >> host: is the healing of america your bestseller, and why did you dedicate it to president dwight eisenhower? >> guest: thank you for asking that. look, "the healing of america" has just sold like crazy. it is astonishing. i just picked up a copy somewhere yesterday. let's see, this is the -- the 10th printing. that's a lot of books in five months. he came out five months ago. so we've done very, very well and made all the bestseller lists, which is nice, as i said. some of my books have flopped so it's nice to one that really

hit. and people get it. i talked to an awful lot of people who understand the point, that providing universal health care coverage is a moral obligation for a rich society. that's the main point of my book if people get it, and we could do. that feels real good. it's very nice of that book selling so well and having people read it and talk about it. but it's not my bestseller. here, i will show you, peter, here's the best selling book i ever wrote. of course, as every american can see, this is of course the famous book "seiko hoteishiki," part two. it says right there. "seiko hoteishiki" part two, the formula of success. this book has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, about half a million in japan and china. it's also a bestseller in china, amazingly. and, you know, what? has nothing to do with me. yes, i am the co-author of this book. it says right here, i don't know if you can see this, i'm the

author. and they do have me, can you see that in the back flap? that's the author of the book. but really, the reason this book has been so successful for me is the illustrator, that's this guy, he is a famous, famous artist in japan. he writes these graphic novels. and is really famous. and this is his most famous character. he is one the most famous in japan. he is fictional but he is a section chief at a big electronics company. and i feel that the graphic novels, comic books, about this corporate executive, i always thought were fantastic window into japanese life in japanese corporate life in japanese society. so i read this every week. it's a weekly serial. and i wrote, started writing

about for the "washington post" about how great, what a great insight it is. so here in this book, here he is. and so the author, the artist, came to me and said let's do a book together, which is this book, "seiko hoteishiki" part two. and if you are smart enough to write a book illustrated by him, you're going to sell a lot of books in japan. that was my secret. and now as i say it still sells every year like crazy in china. so this book here, the formula for success was my format for success. this was my best selling book. but in english, yeah, "the healing of america" has been my bestseller. it is selling like crazy i think. everybody out there who bought it, and for those who didn't buy it, let's see, let me just say that saint patrick's day is coming up. great saint patrick's day giving kind of thing.

but yeah, the book has done really, really well but it's not yet my personal bestseller. that would have to be "seiko hoteishiki." >> host: isn't as profitable to publish in japan as it is in the u.s.? >> guest: the royalty rate is a little lower. in america i get about 50 percent of the retail price of every copy, and in japan the royalty rate was lower. they publish the books much faster. in america you turning the manuscript and it takes nine, 10, 11 months before the book is on the shelf. and all my books in japan were out in two months or three months. so if you really grind amount you could do the faster in japan. >> host: why is that, do you think? >> guest: i've done quite well with my japanese books. >> host: like you think it around is faster in japan? >> guest: they are efficient people, i don't know. wants to put my doing something, they do a good job of it and they do it pretty fast. i think that's the explanation.

>> host: dominic in arlington west virginia. please go ahead with your question for t.r. reid. >> caller: mr. reid, i've been very impressed. you're the first published author, i wrote with affinity publishers, it's a book about of the tank battalion in world war ii, and it's strange mentioned book sales. they only books i sold in the 23 copies that i've got,. >> host: was this self published? commack yester. >> host: what your question for t.r. reid? >> caller: mr. reid, i'd like to know since he's bringing up the european hero, what are the ramifications? have been, wouldn't you think they would need a central government, would you consider like if we have 50 states, the government, each state has its

own separate government, but the government in d.c. would be considered the central government. so what are we supposed to do, like if -- >> host: thank you, dominic. what is the situation? >> guest: can you make currency work when it's used by 16 countries, each with their own independent national government? that's what the euro is going to test, is it a real currency union. one way they have dealt with this is the have a central bank, just like we have the federal reserve. they have the european central bank which sets the interest rates for all the euro member countries. and so to some extent, they have the kind of common government that occurs. but as we see there being tested. they have a currency crisis right now in europe that will test whether they really have a genuine currency union over there. but i just want to point out the

euro has dropped this year, or in the last three months, from about $1.50, cost $1.50 to buy a euro, and now it only cost about $1.30 to buy a euro. but when the euro start in 2002 it only cost 89 cents. so it is a much, much stronger currency that ours is. that's what i think yes, it will survive this current strain and go back to being a strong currently. >> host: utah can u.s. of europe about brussels and the fact that the euro court system can overrule individual countries court systems. do you foresee a day when brussels becomes in washington, d.c., to the u.s. of europe? >> guest: yes. i think over time that central government is going to get stronger. is probably not going to go as fast as you might think if you read my book, "the united states of europe," because i was maybe a little too optimistic for what was going to happen if optimism

is the right were. but no, i think that's definitely going to happen. when i lived in britain, we were living in britain, one night this kind of news flash came out that the european court of human rights in brussels -- know, and hey, i'm sure. in the netherlands had ordered the british army to except homosexuals. it was a violation of human rights in europe not to let homosexuals join your army. and, you know, if some foreign court tried to order our army to do anything, i think we would all rebel. we would go crazy. but no, what happened is the next morning the head of the british military said okay, we will accept gays. women told to do it and we will do it. as long as people are willing to accept the authority a survey by those european institutions, they will have authority. and they've been pretty well. there some areas where they don't get any clout, but in my book i write about the huge

areas of deity life that are now governed by brussels in every country. i have a chapter in my book about the metric martyr, the metric martyr was this green grocer in the north of england, and he was jailed because he sold bananas by the pound, and by european lawyer and only sell fruit by the kilo. right, not by the pound. remember this in the book, the european union has also issued a decree on the maximum curve and a banana. it's got to be a fairly straight piece of fruit in europe or you can't sell it. that kind of power. so they have that kind of clout. and as long as people accept the authority and go along with it, which they are doing, i think that government is going to get stronger and stronger. >> host: ashville brought to light, good afternoon. you are on the air with t.r. reid on booktv. >> caller: thanks for taking my call. my question to mr. reid is this,

i have read about the declining natural population of european countries, in particular it seems to me a cute in russia. 1 million russians disappear and their birthrate is declining, and the only european country that has a sustainable birthrate is muslim albania. and mike question to you, sir, is to any of the political leaders in france, germany, europe, finland, norway, do they take these declines in the national birthrate seriously? i think you mentioned about a million immigrants coming into holland that don't speak dutch. i was just wondering, in your view, does the click leadership in europe regard these declining natural birth rates as a potential serious problem?

>> guest: yes, this is considered to be a public issue in every country. i don't think it's as bad as you just stated. many countries in europe still have a sustainable birthrate that increases the population. britain is over two, and that meets the number. italy i think as the lowest or second lowest birthrate in the world, and many of those countries have declining birth rates. it's absolutely right. and governments are worried about it. you need young workers in particular and that tax heavy, you know, welfare heavy system. you need young workers to pay the taxes to support the welfare base. and they are coming up with various the ways to do that they do it through encouragement. look at the same as beloved movie star just had her fourth child, why don't you kind of thing. the french offer economic have workedmoney, forpleo since the frenc

the birthrate has been increasing at a significant rate. the japanese are also because they are below sustainable level of birth or so yeah, all the countries are working on. i don't think the situation is quite as bad as you said, but i think of what you make is a good one. a lot of those newborn european babies being born in the 21st century are being born to immigrant mothers. find. that's fine. so what? that's what's happening in the united states. you know, as long as you send those kids to the school in your country and teach them to be french or spaniards or dutch, or norwegians, fine, they will come out fine. but it is considered to be an issue in many countries are struggling with ways to increase the birthrate. >> host: san francisco, you on the air. commack i loved your book, "the healing of america." i have read a lot of books, but

this is the best one. >> guest: you're great, thanks. commack especially the part where you talk about the european health care system that are private or nonprofit, and how amazed they were that americans have a for profit private health care system. why do you think most americans don't realize that our private health care system is primarily and this is to make a profit for their stockholders? >> guest: yeah, it's a good question. you're talking here about the insurance side of things, because a lot of european countries, and japan for example, in canada, have a private doctors and private hospitals. and the providers, those are providers, often are allowed, giving are allowed to make a profit. japan has more for-profit hospitals in the united states. it's the insurance side of things, it's the payment side

that all the other countries have decided have to be nonprofit. and the reason is they just think there's a basic conflict between paying for people's health care and paying monthly or quarterly dividend to investors like american insurance companies do. because if you're in insurance, health insurance company, as you have to pay a dividend to your investors every quarter, then you invent schemes not to pay the bills. that's at the came up with his preexisting condition. if you've ever been sick they would want to cover you. you might make a claim. if you make a claim they can't pay a dividend to their investors and make a profit. deal with, they have these lifetime cut off for your in the hospital sick with cancer and they send you a letter saying so i will never pay another penny. they do that to maximize profit. the other countries have decided that that is a fundamental conflict. so they are not allowed, insurance companies are not allowed to make a profit on selling the basic package of

health insurance. and that's worked fine. the insurance companies, of course they squabbled about it, complained about it for us but they put up with it and they are doing okay. i think americans realize full well that our health insurance companies, most of them, make very, very good profits, basically. when they deny your claim the reason they did it was to enhance profit and raised the price of their stock. that's what they are denied claims. and the result is customers tend to loathe their health insurance company because all you do is get a bunch of letters and e-mail saying no. but wall street loves the health insurance companies because of the very practices that make us customers hate them. so the other countries have all decided that can't work and they've taken the profit out of health insurance. and, you know, people say to me, people have read my book like you, and i think you for a, say how could that were, i don't get it. how can insurance be nonprofit?

health insurance in the united states was nonprofit for the first 50 years that the product existed. blue cross to shield was started as nonprofits in every state to help people pay their medical bills. it was only in the late '70s and 80s that these big and national insurance giant started buying up the nonprofit blue cross and blue shield and shipping them to profit. and that's when they start this business of we will cover you if you get sick. were only going to pay so much per year. and, you know, the insurance companies, to enhance their profit, to enhance the profit they have this horrible system called precision. i don't know if you know about recession. but what happens is you sign up for health insurance. they seem you a letter, we made

a movie about this, they send the letters say congratulations, you're covered by wellpoint insurance company, a great in sure. you pay your premiums every month, and then you get hit by a truck or you get breast cancer in a ledger letter and say sorry, you're not covered. that's called recession. they do it to tens of thousands of americans every year. no other country would allow that to happen but i don't think an insurance company would try to do in other countries because they are not there for profit. their mission is life is to pay people's medical bills. and that is with a fundamental distinction between the united states and other countries, and it's one of the major reasons that are health care system isn't working. >> host: jodee tweet said about healing of america. i'm going to buy tr's book, it would've there's i'll donate to the public library. we need to see beyond partisan politics. next call is from buffalo, new york. surely, hi. >> caller: thank you for a terrific discussion. my question is this. do europe and asian nations that you mentioned have the same rampant problem with a list of drug use? particularly heroin and cocaine, that we have here in the united

states. and to what extent might that be a contributing factor to societal problems? >> guest: that's a very good question, yeah. the european countries all have problems with drugs, and there, too, they have dealt with this problem in a different way. for the most part, they have a lot of drugs coming in from africa and east asia, coming right across into these european countries. but for the most part they don't treat these as criminal problems. they treated as a health issue. they basically decriminalized drug use, and if you have a drug problem, if you are an addict, they take you to the hospital. they take you to a treatment center in trying to get you off it in a medical setting, rather than prison. the country that really pioneered this, we all know about the netherlands where you literally and go into a coffee shop and buy marijuana, but the

country that pioneered the overall decriminalization of drugs was portugal. and my family and i went there. it's a great country. and i did a story about how this worked. and the drug minister, the justice minister of portugal said he was the problem. we were jailed these people for cocaine use, and while they were in prison they switch to heroin. it was hard to keep drugs out of the prison, which has also been true in the united states. they decriminalized it and made it a medical issue. but it's a very good point that other countries have drug abuse problems, and may cause social problems for all countries. the countries that have fewer problems are in east asia. japan is a minimal problem. of course, it's an island nation. south korea has much lower drug problems that we do. i don't know enough about china to tell you whether they have drug problems or not. i guess they have been stricter

and they have sort of a stronger thumb on things, i don't know. but it's a good point. the european countries have worried about drug problems. they have problems similar to ours. they have just responded differently to the issue. >> host: marty, west hollywood, california, please go ahead with a question for t.r. reid on booktv. >> caller: thank you so much for taking my call. speaking of obama care, mr. reid, this is so interesting. i have read recorded your program. that is simply legislating decency. and it's not reform. but my question revolves around universal health care. it's maybe in your book, and i have been to you all and listening as carefully as i could to all of this for quite a while now. and i'm not -- i don't understand why no one has brought up universal health care in relation to the gross national product.

meaning that social morality my no studies have been done by corporations and companies involving their employees and productivity, and how it has increased with showing concern for the employee and support. but just the social morality and affirmed social, minimizing anxiety, enhanced security, and how that social morality increases productivity. >> host: in response? >> guest: no, i'm with you on that all the way. i think you're absolutely right, if you cover everybody, there are all sorts of economic benefits to accrue to a nation that provides universal health care coverage. the guy who figured this out initially was the guy who created the first national health care system in this target as i said the first chancellor of germany. he was a conservative, we would call it republican. he was a low tax, pro-business

kind of government guy, and yet he grates this national health care system. and some of the members of his party said what are you doing? what are you doing? he said no, no. , we need a healthy workforce if were going to be a productive society and not produce the british, the english during the industrial revolution. we need a healthy workforce. if we're going to be the dominant military power, we need healthy young people to serve in our military. in other words, they are important national economic reasons to keep people's health in good shape. and, of course, i think my book demonstrates without any question i don't think there's any doubt about this, universal health care coverage saves money. can i say that again? universal coverage is cheaper, you spend less per capita on health care if you cover everybody. you want proof? go to any of the 10 nations i went to in my book.

everyone of them covers everybody. they spend about half as much per capita, and generally come in many cases, they have better health statistics than we do. so they're getting better results for less money because, because they cover everybody. it's not a corset is that countries with universal coverage at lower cost per capita. it's not a coincidence. it's a function of universal coverage. and believe me, members of congress have read my book. they call me up, which is quite nice, but they don't seem to get this point. if you want to cut the cost of health care, cover everybody. it's worked in every other country. it will work here. so yeah, i completely agree with you in terms of productivity, in terms of overall cost, we would be well, much better off economically with universal coverage. plus, there's a huge competitive disadvantage for american manufacturers. we're in a globally competitive market here, and yet our

manufacturers are paying vastly more for health care to keep their workers healthy than any of our competitors. if we covered everybody, we would cut those costs. images as you, how come nobody in congress gets this? why can't i get his point across? i have briefed congressional committees. i went to a briefing in florida and braved a dozen members of congress, and they listened politely and say that so interesting. but you can tell they don't believe it. it's true. universal coverage reduces cost. >> host: an e-mail one of the criticisms in the u.s. of the european social democratic model is that this communitarian approach you described with generous benefits, free education, other government services, along with high taxes, inhibit the entrepreneurial spirit that has been one of the cultural landmarks of american society. is there any validity to this criticism? >> guest: that make sense to me that he would make sense to me

that high taxes and kind of omnipresent government would limit. but as a matter fact i'm not sure it's borne out in practice. for example, you have a cell phone, you know, cell phone is an american invention. great device, and we, one of our great industrial champions, motorola, used to be the world's biggest seller of cell phones. this was a market that america owes. guess what? a finnish company, a european country called no kid came along and now has twice the market share of any american company. they own the market. because they were innovative, because they were productive. our biggest exporter, the biggest export in the united states is bowling, this maker of huge jet planes. but boeing has been outsold for the last six years by a european company called airbus.

so yeah, you could make the case that those high taxes and kind of government presence everywhere limits innovation, but in the markets, just ask boeing if they are having trouble competing against those lazy socialists in europe. the answer is yes, they have been outsold by airbus, you know, as i always point out it was the third biggest german auto company, mercedes, that bought chrysler. the third biggest american auto company. it wasn't the other way around. it wasn't us buying them. it was been buying us. i absolutely see the suggestion, the suppressive of government and the high taxes, must be a terrible burden on innovation. but it's not. but even in the drug industry, a study recently in the american journal health affairs looking at where a major blockbuster drugs came from, and more of

them came from europe and japan then came from the united states that a lot came from the united states. we are a very innovative country, but those countries are doing well, too. and, of course, the drug industry's greatest achievement ever, at least if you watch a tv ad ad, viagra. that was invented in britain. >> host: as a sidenote, t. r. reid mentioned cell phone being invented in america. if you're interested in being the inventor of the cell phone, you can go to c-span.org, recently we interviewed marty cooper who is the inventor of the cell phone. he worked for motorola at the time. often utah, you are on with t.r. reid. please go ahead. >> caller: hello? i have a couple of comments. when we talk about this health care, all the faucet congress makes, they need to apply to all people, not just a few. second comment is i thought that when connors, i thought the congress represent the people,

not the party. >> host: what does that mean? >> caller: we becker about the republicans and democrats, and we say it is nonpartisan. partisan, my foot. i don't disagree that we have different points of view, but i think they represent the public. and when they represent the party, they are not representing all of us. they're only representing a few of us. >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: yeah, i don't buy that. people have aligned into political parties and political parties have tens of millions of followers. and people join political parties because they basically share a political and philosophical mindset with their representative from that party. i don't think belonging to a party gets in the way of serving the people. i don't accept that. you say that congress should pass laws that apply to everybody. i would urge that in health care, that's certainly been the

case in other countries. in fact, if we were asked earlier what's the biggest difference between the u.s. and other countries, the biggest difference is the other wealthy democracies that i would do for my book, all of them first made the moral commitment to cover everybody. they first said, doggone it, we are a rich country, we want everybody in our country to of health care when they needed. we don't want anybody dying for lack of a doctor. we don't want anybody going bankrupt because of medical. they first made that commitment. once you commit to do that, you can design a system that will cover everybody, because all the other countries have done so. and the argument in my book is because we have never had that conversation because we've never made that moral judgment that we need to cover everybody. our debate always gets distracted on to things like insurance company reimbursement rates, or you know, the procedural fee scale going to

doctors. we get distracted on that stuff and we lose sight of the real goal, which ought to become in my view, universal coverage at reasonable cost. i think if we focus on that like all the other rich countries did, we could do it. we are americans. we can do this. >> host: we have about an hour and a half left with i guess, t.r. reid who is currently in denver. why do you live in denver? >> guest: i have very good fortune, what was a, 38 years ago to marry a coloradan, and peggy is a very loyal colorado native. and, you know, we lived around the world. and after every country, and he said let's go home. and we are home. and i feel now, this is a controversial statement in my family, but i'm a coloradan. doggone it, i chose to come in as an adult that i should get more points than someone who just happened to be born here. so i love our beautiful state. we love this game and the hiking and fishing in the biking. and the really friendly feel of

people in our wide open western state, and the great snow in the sun glistening on the snow. i decided, i'm so lucky that i married a coloradan. and we now live, i would say, about 4 miles from peggy's growth at home and i hope that is close enough. >> host: were going to take a short break. we visited t.r. reid in his own. and we saw his office and where he writes, and he talks a little bit about that. that's three or four minutes and then we will be back with live coals. the first, mr. reid, i want you to ponder this e-mail that we got from john worthy. said you have lived around the world. this is something for you to think about. i read your books. i've seen it many times on tv. i used to intuit your bits and pieces on npr, now looking for to in depth. question, remember the composite best friendliest person criticize, smartest nicest now, most athletic, that your books

and stuffed into it in high school? well, please tell us your composite country filling in the same blanks. best health care, test transportation, conservation, and educational system, care of old folks, support of the art, friendly people, best food, and together best that you can think of. something for you to think about and we will be back live with t.r. reid in just a few minutes. >> this kind of living room area here is actually my office. and for many years this was the rocky mount bureau of the "washington post." of course, that doesn't exist anymore. newspapers can't afford bureaus anymore. when there was one i was it in this was the location of the "washington post" in denver. and like every office i've ever had, the wall of our kids. i think we get these at the colorado state fair about 20 years ago or so when the kids were pretty little. and then the store, this old

door is my desk. it's on a couple file cabinets. and then over here, is working my records. so here's what i do. whenever i start a new book, i bought a file cabinet. and when you start it's empty. and then you start gathering stuff. and there is one folder in the file cabinet. and here's the file cabinet. here's the healing of america. the whole thing is just a chance that i can't even get it all in. that's what comes when you write a book. you just gathered lots and lots and lots of information. so anybody who complains that my book is too long a, it could've been much longer if i throw all that stuff in there. so this is where i write my books. and, you know, what? it's hard work. i try really hard to write them in a chatty, friendly way. i throw jokes in there, you know, times and stuff. but it turns out to be very hard to make a book look easy. it is hard work. a nice thing is when we lived in japan, although we had a pretty

big house by japanese standards, it was the smallest house our family had ever lived in. and i had to do my writing in one corner of room where we ate and watched tv, and the kids played where everything happened. so my kids saw me slaving over a couple of books there, and they came to realize how hard work is to write a book that it is really hard. while i was writing this book, i made a film for pbs frontline about medicine, this ancient hindu form of medicine and india. and this is, how may ours does he have? he only has four which is relatively small number for a hindu. he is the hindu god of healing, and i put him up there in the hope that he would push me to get do with my book on "the healing of america." that was the thought. over here is a banner i got at april national health service rally in britain. i love the nhs, and this is --

you can't see is i don't think, but that is a very funny chart about how screwed up on how messed up the american health system is. it's ridiculous that the palm in our life is too many books. and we have moved around the world and we haul all of these books. and for a while, i was throwing away books, or giving away books. i had too many books. they don't all figures i was giving away books. and then i went to visit a friend of mine who lives in a beautiful house in princeton new jersey. and he just had this in every room in house, every room of his house was all books and shelves. so i stopped giving away books and throwing away books. it is going to show them all from now on is what i'm going to do. so i like foreign languages. my mom was german, so i kind of grew up with a little bit of german. and that i got into latin and greek. so here's all of my latin and greek here. and then later in life, i got into chinese and japanese, and this will amaze you but as a

matter of fact, knowing latin really help me learn japanese. completely different languages, but if you know let in, it's such a well structured language, it helps you learn anything. so here are all of these, all of these japanese books of mine. this is my so-called leisure reading. it's not very leisurely. here's what i'm trying to do. i'm trying to read the tale of dingy. this is the great japanese epic. was written in 1000 a.d. it is very hard to read. nobody in japan can read. so i'm reading this translation of that was done for japanese middle schools and high schools, and even so i had to look up like every word. can you see that? and so i'm reading the book, just when i get stuck i have this very good translation of it here that i have to dig through to find out. here i have the actual original text of ginghi.

just in case i want to know how it was really written before the guys have provided for japanese teenagers. and then here's the magic tool. this is an electronic dictiona dictionary. this has five books in it. it has japanese english dictionary, english japanese dictionary, japanese japanese to do, a japanese history encyclopedia in the history of 5000 chinese characters. so they are all in your. i have many more books on my lap if it weren't for this is that the digital dictionary. you can just write here and it looks it up. i found this word right there, and instead of having to look it up the normally in a japanese dictionary, which is very complicated, you just like the two characters here and there it is. so this is such a great tool. it would change my life for the better.

>> host: and we are back live with t

>> host: and we're back live with t.r. reid, who is in denver near his home. this is booktv's "in depth." will continue to take your calls, e-mails and tweaks. let's put the numbers up. (202) 737-0001. mountain and pacific, (202) 737-0002 is the number for you to call. booktv at c-span.org is our e-mail address, and twitter.com slashing booktv if you want to send a tweak to t.r. reid. mr. reid, we left off with joann worley of maryville, tennessee, and her e-mail about the best composite countries from all the places you have lived. health care. >> guest: well, for health care i think in the country that commits to cover everybody meets my test for best. and the important thing, the message of my book is, if the goal is universal coverage at reasonable cost, it turns out there are a lot of routes to that destination.

our family lived in japan and britain. they were quite different systems, in britain, everything is paid for by the government. socialized medicine, worked fine. but in japan, that doctors, hospital, insurance is private. that worked fine, too. the important thing in health care is in a country that covers everybody, and there are, you know, most of the rich countries to the. so i would have to put them all on that scale. >> host: best transportation? >> guest: the best mass transit i've seen is japan was probably the netherlands a close second. the japanese, you know, they are big carmakers. they're the biggest carmaker in the world, and they love cars that they have more cars per capita than we do, but it's a crowded country. you know, they don't use their cars much. they do everything by mass transit. they use the car for the weekend trip up to the hills or something basically. so you know what the japanese have done? they have this problem, people in the morning, everybody in

tokyo are in the big cities walks to the train or walks to the subway to take the train to work. and a lot of people ride their bike. and so outside the train stations or the subway stations, there will be a, 10,000 bicycles. and they just totally cover the sidewalk. you can't get around it. it's a big issue in japan is bicycle contingent. there's just too many. japanese, they're pretty innovative people. so here's what they have invented. this is amazing to me. at the subway station, there is this kind of very narrow skyscraper, just like a toaster on its side. and very narrow building. you couldn't even in the door. and it has a little slit. and you push a button, and the slot opens and this metal arm comes out and grabs the front wheel of your bicycle and yanks it away, and then it goes up nine stories and a store your

bicycle somewhere. and after work you come back and you punch in your number and in about 12 seconds, boom, out comes the metal arm with your bicycle. in other words, they found a way to deal with this so people can still ride a bike to mass transit. the netherlands, i just think it's such a good integrated system. you get off the plane at the airport in amsterdam, and there's a train to anywhere in europe. you just walk down the hallway and it's there. i would say transportation, netherlands, france and germany. they have great high speed trains. but japan is the best. >> host: conservation? >> guest: conservation of natural resources? i would guess in the united states is because we have these very strong requirements, if you cut down in a to trade you have to plant an acre of trees. of the countries don't have that. i'm sure we have more protected

wilderness area than any country, and we should have the best national parks i've ever been too. i'm going to vote u.s. best. >> host: educational system? >> guest: well, we have such a great democratic educational system in which everybody is entitled to as good a education as we can give them. i think it's pretty good. the japanese system of course is famous. famous, for training kids to take lead in science and engineering. japan and china have this incredibly complicated writing system with thousands of different letters, chinese characters, you know, in japan is about 99% literacy. and even china is over 80% literacy with this very complicated system. so they are doing something -- they're doing something right about teaching leaders to in a very complicated reading system. >> host: just a couple more. old folks and the arts?

>> guest: yeah, old folks? well, of course those confucian countries really revere the elderly, and they basically have an obligation on the family to care for older people in the family. and so life is pretty good for seniors and those confucian countries. but i think the united states does a good job of taking care of our seniors. i mean, we don't provide health care to everybody, but we do have medicare for all our seniors. we don't provide pensions for everybody, but you know, government help for everybody who is poor, but seniors to get social security. so i think the u.s. has also done a good job of respecting and caring for our elderly. >> host: and the arts. >> guest: you know, the u.s. is the most vibrant art scene in the world. let's see, in literature, in visual arts art, in movie and

tv, in music. it's hard to imagine a country that can match us. i mean, you go to any other country, and everybody is walking down the street with the newest model nikes on their feet and a cup of starbucks and an ipod playing, you know, 50-cent or beyoncé or black eye peas or something. today, the u.s. is the trendsetter for popular arts and fine arts around the world. and just tonight, billions of people around the world are going to watch the oscars. and i can say from having lived in europe, as soon as americanamerica's when all the oscars, the european newspapers will complain they ignored us, those rats, how could they do that? they always do that. >> host: and two more, friendly's people and best food. >> guest: from this table is deathly the united states. and it one of the striking things about living overseas,

although one of the reasons i thought our family enjoyed living overseas is it makes you a better america. if you live in other countries, you have a better appreciation for the things we do right, the way we kind of taken everybody from all over the world and give everybody pretty much an equal chance to succeed. that's so american, but i just think the casual friendliness of americans is unparalleled in the world. we have made very good friends in other countries, believe me, and the japanese and the birds, too, for that matter. there was a work in french it. want to do that they're going to be your friend they call you up and work at. but the way you can meet somebody sitting next to you at the ballgame in america, or get chatting with someone on the elevator. that casual one, that kind of expectation that we are equal people here and we can get along. that's to be thoroughly un-american. friendly's people in america,

americans. >> and food. >> guest: the best food in the world. we've got it all is the thing. the best food in the world? that's tough to say. america has everything. it's kind of hard to beat a steak and baked potato, but we've -- you know, a good hunk of homemade apple pie is very hard to beat anywhere in the world. but i've had great food everywhere. can add one more candidate year to best? >> host: sure. >> guest: i think the best, best seen i would rate is nepal. it's an amazing country. at the southern border they have this spectacular rain forest, and, of course, the northern border is not addressed. and in between is this incredibly steep country with these ricefields that in china and japan wheezed as he rises, where you cut in it into the

hillside so you can plagiarize, maybe, yeah, you might see 10 or 12 or in some extreme cases 15, 18 care system. in nepal, you loose cannon. they have 138 terraces out the side of this hill growing rice or potatoes or crops. just a spectacular rugged country. and then the kathmandu valley, the central value of nepal is incredibly pitiful. and to the north they have i think six of the world's 12 highest mountains, including the spectacular country or whatever. so just for sure, i mean, like one big national park, i would vote no. >> host: back to your calls for tre. glendale, wisconsin. glynn, please go ahead. >> caller: i'm here. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: i just want to ask you what you think the essence of the political divide is in this country. not only as it applies to health

care, but practically everything because it seems to me, i have an answer for that question, but i'm just wondering what choice would be. >> host: what's your answer? >> caller: it's about blame and judgment. it's about warfare. >> host: t. r. reid? >> guest: yeah, i think i'd country is divided. i think that's right. when a guy who ran for president promising to try to overcome the divide, and i think it is a big reason obama won because people thought we needed that kind of leader. it is clear that he hasn't been able to do, at least not yet. why are we so divided? here's what i think. may i first say, glenn, in the first place you should always be suspicious of somebody who comes up with an overarching theory of everything. theories that when everything are always wrong, but i've got one anyway. so what i've been seeing is in the kind of polling, and it shows up in everybody's polls,

is a sense of pessimism among america's. one way this is expresses do you think the united states is in decline? and in the most recent polls i've seen it this year, in 2010, 60 to 65 percent of the american people think we are in decline. do you think life will be better for your kids than it has been for you? about 65 percent of americans say no. in other words, they think other countries will do better and we will do worse in this century than we have done in the past. i don't buy that intimately. i think my kids will do better than i've done. but if you believe that, if you think things are getting worse and were in decline, and you are scared of losing what you have got, then i think people grip on and grab and hold on as hard as they can't do what they've got. and you're scared of working together. you're scared of big change. and so i think that fundamental pessimism, which our country also had in 1979 and 1980, we

had the same kind of feeling. i think that's a reason for intense political division. and if we get our confidence back, if things start to click for america, i think we will become -- come together politically. the flaw is it is to back. therefore, it has got to be wrong. but that's kind of what i've been thinking recently. >> host: there was a rumor that you are thinking about running for political office. >> guest: yeah, what happened is i've been working on health care. and as i said earlier in the show, i think it may well be that the way we're going to get to universal health care in america is state by state. and i live in this terrific state, colorado, 5 million of us, pretty well governed state. and maybe call about could be a leader in getting to universal health care. in my local state rep down in the scenic confines of the southeast denver was the leading

person in our state legislature on health care reform. she really knew that issue. and all of a sudden, boom, in the middle of her term our state rep announced that she was going to retire. and so there was a vacancy in her seat, and some people working on health care reform new that i lived in that district and said why don't you do this, and maybe you can get colorado to be a leader? and i grabbed that and i jumped at the chance. and i didn't win. the thing that makes this a little easier to bear was the guy who beat me better. i mean, you don't like to admit that, but the guy who beat me have been working for the party for years. he was a good loyalist, which i have not been. and he has turned out to be a very good state rep, daniel kagan is his name. he has been good. and i think it helps a little if you run and lose, if the other guy, if the other guy is better,

you know. and he was a better state rep than i would have been. so i tried. i lost, and probably a good thing because i have been so busy selling the book that it would have had time to be a decent state rep. >> host: out in tampa, good afternoon. >> caller: high, mr. reid. you were mentioning among other countries of having universal health system, the u.k. back when they decided to start that, did they have as heavily entrenched industry as here? and if they did, did they buy and like the ones like they did here or was it a total different situation? or any of the other countries that you know about in europe that has a plan that covers everyone. >> guest: yeah, that's a good question, and it is relevant. britain got to universal health care, they pass a bill in 1946. they start the national health service in 1948.

the doctors thought it, but they didn't have an interest for profit insurance industry. the place that i think is relevant to the united states is in switzerland. switzerland is a country like us. it's a fiery democracy with feisty parties. there's a lot of money floating around their politics like here. and they have big drug companies and big international insurance companies. i talk about this, i described as at some length in my book. and the swiss insurance companies started taking lessons from wellpoint and united health and his other for-profit insurance companies in the united states. they figured out, as are insurance companies have figured out, if you want to make a profit, then don't ever cover anybody who's ever been sick because they might make a claim. they followed us in doing the preexisting condition thing. the swiss insurance companies, like the american companies,

started hiring large numbers of underwriters whose job is to stamp know, you know, to deny a claim because it's cheaper for them to send you a form letter saying tonight than to actually pay your claim and. and the swiss health insurance industry, by the mid '90s, looked a lot like ours. there were lots of denials, and people were unhappy. 5 percent of the people in switzerland couldn't get insurance at all because they had a preexisting condition. and this was decide that this was unacceptable. they said in a rich society, everybody, not 95%, but everybody should have health coverage. and so they had a national referendum. it was led by young woman, a woman named ruth dreyfus was the health minister. and she said dog on it, we are a rich country, we're all in this together, we are all citizens of the same country. let's give everybody health care. and the insurance industry, which thought they were going to lose on the deal, fought it like crazy. huge investment. the drug companies fought it

like crazy, and ruth dreyfus and others like her talk on this huge drug company and insurance company money, and one. they pass a national referendum that said the insurance companies have to sell the product to everybody. they took the profit out of health insurance. so basic health insurance is a nonprofit endeavor now in switzerland. . . they would never go back. and that health minister who led the fight, ruth dreifuss, went on to become the first female president of the swiss fed case. so i offer that in my book as a model. yeah, you can take on entrenched interests and big money in health care if you make the right argument. and her argument was, we think everybody who's sick should have access to a doctor. and that is the case in all the other rich countries. it's only in america that we let tens of thousands of our neighbors die every year of

treatable diseases because they can't see a doctor. we meet one on the first page of my book. can't see a doctor.d we meet the 32-year-old college graduate who got sick so the insurance companies would not tell her coverage anymore and she died of a treatable disease thcause she couldn't afford the drug than doctors she needed in the richest country in the world. that was happening in switzerland and the swiss changed it even though the insurance companies fought them like crazy. this is why i am so confident, i know we could change our system despite the money floating around our politics if we got a leader to tell us the right thing. do other countries have problems with earmarks' as we have in the you ask? this is from paul. other countries have powerful members of parliament taking national money and pumping it into their districts. exa definitely happens.

they don't call it earmarks but i'd give a good example. he japan if you are any town of importance in japan holidays -- we lived on the southern island et tapan and is far from the big city on the main island so it took a long time to get the bullet train down there but there was a powerful member of the japanese diet from the tuthernmost like miami, the southernmost town. he got a bullet train built from midway on kyushu but the middle part still didn't because they ead a week -- they had a national train system with a big gap in it. the other guy wasn't as powerful. every country i ever lived in or

watched, members of congress tried to snatch tax money and pour it into their districts. this is a common democratic phenomena in. >> congressional odyssey and confucius lives next door, two of my favorite books. any chance they will be released in kindle additions? >> i didn't hear that. say it again. >> they will be released in kindle editions? electronic reader additions? >> definitely a chance that those will come out in kendall. if you click on amazon or bonds and noble and say i would like to have an e book version they will do it. those two books could come out. confucius is stil in print. i think my book congressional odyssey about how bill becomes a law is not in print any more so you have to buy it used.

all my fellow officers out there, one of the biggest downers of being an author is when you walk into a college bookstore and you see that erofessor jones has required your book as the text. whethere is a big stack of used oks s. i don't make a penny when they buy those books used. the bookstore makes all the dough. tdon't get a dime for it. college student, when you buy the required texts, by the latest edition and the author will get a little something. >> i can't imagine no one would want to know about the saw the of the waterway user fee bill. il i did pick a fairly mundane ,iece of legislation for my bill becomes a law. but as a matter of fact it is a fascinating story. that bill was sponsored by the

lowest ranking member of minority party in the senate at the timq3 ankwas in mexico and the u.s. senate is so hung up on rain and hierarchy and stature that they rate each of them by seniority and rain. the highest ranking guy in the minority party. the first week of congress, two years ago on the last day of congress it was passed into law. it became a fabulous story even though it is about waterway user charges and people have said to me many times you were so lucky that you chose such an e teresting bill to focus on. g didn't pick a particularly interesting bill. if you know all the lobbying and manipulating and political trickery going on around them and the money pouring in to pass

them or defeat them, they are " tuinteresting. congressional odyssey turned out to be a pretty good story. i worked on it for a couple years and was trying to think of the title for the book. i finally hit on congressional odyssey because the bill had just as many twists and turns as ulysses trying to get home from the trojan war. it took ten years. i that is why i call it congressional odyssey and i had been chatting with my dad or my father-in-law about the title for this book and finally hit on congressional odyssey so i called my father-in-law and said i have a title for the book. iam going to call it congressional odyssey and he didn't hear that. was over the phone and he thought i said congressional honesty. he said congressional honesty? that will be a short book. jennifer in connecticut.

>> you are on with t. r. reid. >> caller: i would support you if you ran for office because n,u are a straight shooter and you know what you are talking about but i have a comment. last night on fox glen beck said education for our children is not their right but a privilege. thomas jefferson, one of our founding fathers and a signer of the constitution start america's public school system because he believed a good education was the right of every child, pour or rich which leads me to my question. in europe students get their education for free including medical students. in the united states, a young intern starts with a huge debt over 100,000. evere is a real shortage of chooors in the united states and many good students don't go to medical school because --

>> host: what is your question? k caller: could you address this issue of free medical education? >> host: mr. reid? >> guest: i don't agree with glen beck. in a wealthy society everybody should have the right to free public education. it is good for all of us. this is not some whimsical n veaway that we hand to children because we're nice guys. it is good for our society to have an educated population. ny is essential. i don't see it as a giveaway. i feel the same way about health-care. strich society ought to keep people healthy. more productive, you save money and have a lot of social medifits out of covering anybody but it is true, higher education aximugh medical school is free.

in britain, you have to pay but the maximum is 3,000 pounds a sion, $4,500 a year. they had just made the decision that there was value for society in providing this education for free and they have doctors who graduate with no debt and perhaps are more willing to take on a job as a pediatrician or internist or family practitioner andh society's need more of. our doctors graduate with $180,000 of debt and it is btractive to the radiologist or dermatologist and get the big bucks even though society may need family doctors and family practitioners. it would be such a snap to make medical care, medical school, we

should have done it ten years ago. it would be way under half of 1% of what we pay on health care and we would get more family care, general practitioner, we'dors. we would reduce the stress on our young doctors and get a lot of value out of this and some states are starting to do it. some states are starting to forgive the debts of young doctors who don't into a general practice situation. ho should definitely make medical school free for any isctors willing to be a general practitioner and it would be so cheap. it wouldn't cost a thing. >> aaron wants to know what is the favorite of your many books and what was the best review you ever got? >> guest: my favorite book -- i suppose my favorite book is the one i told you was a flobut it

was the one -- it was about the invention of the microchip and it was hard for me to figure out how a microchip works. i did a lot of work and plant it pretty clearly. owill say for my current book the healing of america, i put a lot of work into that one and the striking thing is i am reporter. i try to explain things to people but unlike the book because i think it is absolutely essential that our society get the universal coverage at reasonable cost and this book fors how to do it. people faint me for writing the book. s.is hasn't happened with my other books. people might say that was interesting or learned something the people come up to me and say orenk you for their work. that hasn't happened before r cause i think people realize there might be some benefit to our society.

often do you get to benefit your society so i like that. i really like this book and it is done very well and i get to the heee hours un c-span. i know of the best review i ever got, every other knows that, the best review i ever got was a boat you like, ski japan, this is an english language guide to ski resorts in japan. it was a lot of fun writing that book. i put in every joke i know about japan. the research was great, we went to ski resorts all over japan and they have a lot of them. at the time my roadbed books ooey had 720 ski resorts and that is only counting the ones that were outdoors. they have a bunch of indoor ski had rts with artificial snow too. a had a lot of fun writing the book. we wrote it because japan was about to host the winter

olympics in 1998. so we fought--the publisher thought there would be a market for an english language guidebook to ski areas in japan and it was the first one. i'm the only guy who has done ngli in english. so the book came out and there were five or six english-language newspapers written partly for expatriate's living in tokyo and partly for theanese people who want to tactice. one of these newspapers -- the book editor gets its book and figures he has got to review it so he needs somebody who can read english and is a skier to review the book so he assigned it to me. i got to review my own book. i have done enough bum reviews in my life, i took advantage of

this. think of every cliche you can imagine. if you can only read one book this year it must be ski japan. and deserves to sit on your bookshelf next to war and peace. you name that i put it in. >> a printed. >> they printed it. the best review i ever got. oliver wilson dave this. it was a great review. that guyçç really understood book. it was a review that you read in the new york times. there was a doctor who really understood what on was trying to do in this book and like it. that is closer but now i think it deserves to be on the shelf next to war and peace is the best line i ever got. >> we forgot to find out why you tdicated healing of america to

dwight eisenhower. >> caller: i make the argument that other rich countries do a better job of providing health care to their citizens than the united states does and i have learned -- we said i wrote that book confucius' live next door about how asian countries have lower crime rates. i talked about how the europeans came together and built this snd of market superpower and in all these books i'm saying to inericans there are things we could learn overseas, things that other countries do better ldan we do. we have a powerful, innovative country but there are things we fould do better. here's what i have learned the hard way. c you write a book saying other countries have lower crime rates then the united states and the predominantly on conservative

ed t radio, people say you hate america, you hate our country. ved inthem along. you hit our country. i served 5 years in the u.s. navy voluntarily. i love our country. but you get that. how dare you say that any country does anything better than the united states of omerica and so i knew that would happen. i can right out and say the other countries cover everybody, .etter results, less spending. i knew i would get nailed for a so here's my defense mechanism. a dedicated the book to dwight eisenhower and the reason is he is the supreme allied commander in europe. he was elected president and take over the white house in 1953 and the biggest domestic issue facing our country than was interstate transit. we had a series of two lane highways. sunward their road. if you spend a lot of time on

blood. we didn't have an interstate highway system and ike said we ndve got to do this and various highway departments and planners came up with this plant for a network of two lane highways running from farms to market across the country and it went through the main street of every city in america. and ike said wait a minute, i have seen something better because he had been supreme allied commander in europe and in germany he had seen these ys wways and not these bills. they were four lane highways with curving on ramps and off ramps so no stop signs or red lights. every hundred miles they put a gas station along the highway. they were expressway's. he had seen them and ike says in his memoir i saw the two lane highway plans put forth by our

states but i had seen four lane ribbons of highway crisscrossing in asian and i saw the value of that so i took the german plan and impose it on america. that is the interstate highway system. the official name of it is the dwight eisenhower interstate highway system. today it is 45,000 miles of highway and 14,000 interchanges and zero stoplights and we love the interstates. they are an integral part of american life but he borrowed it from germany. tt just from germany but from ase nazis and nobody seems to care. this was my defense mechanism. people say how dare you claim that other countries have better health care i can say i can and i are doing the same thing. that is why i did it. et you are on with t. r. reid.

thanks for holding. >> two question. i will try to get to the point. my first question is out of the country's you identified with more efficient, reasonable, rational hybrid public/private health care systems, how many of hose, if you know, had to transition from a system more similar to ours with all these intrench private interests hmos and insurance companies and how did they do it and if not, what amae does that play in making it o difficult for the obama administration right now? >> guest: how many countries had to transit from a rotten, erratic health care system like ours to get the universal coverage? terrific question.

i go through this in the book. canada and britain did, france did, taiwan did. a lot of countries have made that transition because they made the moral commitment to cover everybody. germany won't count because they started in 1883 but a lot of countries have done it. eid it in the twentieth century. and describe this at some blanks how these different countries got there and i will tell you the pattern. it is not universal but a very common pattern, the most common pattern is some leader came along and said to the people, we need to provide health care for everybody who is sick. d erybody in our country, all our neighbors should have access onlydoctor when they needed. people bought that argument. i they only bought it because a leader came along and as i was

talking earlier about what happened in switzerland in many cases the entrenched interests fought it like crazy and canada, doctors went on strike. .he doctors went on strike to protest universal coverage because they thought it would get in the way of their practice. in many countries the insurance industry and drug industry put up big money to fight this idea but a leader came along and said to the people let's do the right thing. let's make the moral commitment to cover everybody. it is striking how often that is the pattern. you will see this pattern over and over in different countries. the answer is yes, a country can transit from a private for profit spotty insurance system like we have to universal coverage. and if you want an example right here at home.

in 1965 we had president lyndon johnson who got this crazy idea that all americans seniors should have health-insurance and odey decided the way to do it was with the canadian model for medicare were you get insurance from the government to go to private doctors. outrae doctor is. the american medical association fought like crazy. it was socialism, was outrageous, how dare we and today no one would give a te icare. if you told the seniors to go to inivate insurance they would rebel. you can overcome entrenched interests if a leader convinces people that this is the right thing to do. sa saw it -- you will see it in uldy countries. >> host: he says don't buy my textbooks used and says it would be a snap for the u.s. to heovide free medical school in. f >> i don't buy that at all.

we can buy the textbooks for these kids. they will be primary care doctors. i would strongly recommend .edical schools teach a health policy course to all their okctors before they graduate and here's a perfect text for that book and medical schools should provided that they shouldn't provided use. they should provide a new edition. >> host: next caller's from akink in new jersey. >> caller: i have some issues with what you're saying and some comments you were making about getting things for free. in this country we have created a bunch of people that fink they should get everything for free and there is a major problem oth this because our country -- our politicians and our lvernment have created this monster by wanting to take care

of everything we do in our lives in all aspects. the problem with health care haç a lot to do with i'm going to go on a limb and say there are 20 to faherty illegal immigrants in this country who don't pay anything in the system and that puts a huge strain on our medical process in this country, on the hospitals and all that. what ever happened to good old-fashioned going on and earnings something if you wanted? why does everyone have to get anything for free? >> guest: none of it is free. the question is what is the mechanism for paying and how can we distribute this cost fairly. and i think this gets -- i will tell you about a concept called the distributive ethic which is what is the fair or smart way to

distributed different goods in society? for example there is a distributive ethic for vote. everyone gets one. vll gates gets one vote and the guy who watches the bumper on his limousine gets one vote. very different in life and wealth but they both get one vote. that is our ethic for votes and voting isn't free. some government has to set up a voting booth and buy the machinery and get the counters and test. is not free. we pay for it through taxes eecause we decided that is the right way to distribute. we don't charge people $5 even though that is what it may cost. and we have a different distributive effort for yachts. the rule for yachts is if you onve the money and you can buy for your own work or however you he mwhen and if you don't have the money we don't get one that we think that is the best way to

distribute yachts so your question is which things should s ciety decide to pay for even though it costs money? public education is not free. somebody pays for it. you pay for in your taxes and i pay for it and that is fine because we made the social commitment to provide education to make our country better over the long run and i say devoe for most countries have decided did a for health care. socth care when you are sick is more like voting then he goting. body ha social good that society should prevail. it is not free. somebody has to pay the hospital. somebody has to pay the doctor and by the pills. the question is how should you distribute this resource? should you come up with a mechanism where everybody has access to it even though we all have to pay? and i would say the most common

formula in the world, in the rich countries, the most common formula for allocating health tha is healthcare for everybody paid for by everybody. everybody contributes and everybody benefits. this is how we do public education. if you were charged with a crime cu would be guaranteed an impartial judge, impartial jury, free lawyers you couldn't afford one. we all pay for that. it is not free. somebody pays for it because we have decided to allocate this good as a social good fairly. the other rich countries have all decided that health care too should be distributed like the other rights that people have and the united states has never made that determination. here is the striking economic fact which i mentioned before. if you cover everybody, if you make that commitment you save

oney. universal coverage costs less per capita than the kind of spotty system we have in america. definitely not free. somebody has to pay for it and the question is, a social wide political decision, how will we pay for this? we have said if you are rich or your employer is rich you get good health care and if not tough. no other country has made the decision that way. >> host: joan, you are on with t. r. reid on booktv. a caller: i was wondering, going back to your book on confucius, and the emergence of the poor eastern asian nations, have you ever run across a man who was rebuilding tokyo or japan after the bombing after

world war 2? >> host: why do you ask? why do you ask that question? >> i believe an american who could have left an imprint at the emerging countries. lelwost: he was quality control. >> guest: a quality control experts and there's a chapter about him in my book the chip. he is also in confucius is next door. because he did teach east asian countries how to get the kind of quality control they are famous for. have met mr. deming and reported on him when i was writing my my christian book. i also commend the confucius' book. ui was an american man he thought up these mechanisms for

building in quality from the very beginning and his question, the question he always asked was would you rather burn the test and scraped it or would you rather make the coast right the first time? the answer is pretty obvious. b order to make toast right, you have got to build in good miastmaking procedures every prea of the way. this is what he was preaching in the 60s. siftys and 60s and got very little audience in the united we did. we were the dominant manufacturing force and in need any advice on quality. the people who really listened to him were the east asian. particularly the japanese. he instructed the japanese on quality control and they listened. to this day, with the pulitzer prize of manufacturing in japan,

they give a prize to someone who is great at high problems--high quality manufacturing. is called the deming prize name for our american guy. a told me when i met him, he always had a better audience in japan than the rest of asia than in the united states because we felt we do need him and one of the reasons the japanese have been so successful on the world economic stage is because they have this a earned reputation for high quality manufacturing but they learned it from an yeerican. he is in two of my books. >> host: what does the t r stand for and why use initials rather than your name and what do your idiends call you? >> guest: thomas roy reed free. i was thomas r. reid for quite a while. peggy and i were living in japan

as newlyweds. i locked in a couple stories to by-lboy or that kind of magazine with my dad's name and side by line by thomas r. reed. my dad said wire you putting our name in those dirty magazines? so here's what i did. ecwrote a piece for tv guide. nothing is wrong with tv guide. ike rfectly legitimate magazine. gowrote a piece about what anpanese tv is like for tv guide, pretty good television and at the time they had this jay leno show, the tonight show le japan calledçç 11:00 p.m.. they had a jay leno figure and the band leader, the sidekick kind of figure on this japanese show was a naked woman. she was sitting naked on this

black leather couch. tenever they went for a commercial break they would flash this naked woman for two seconds and she would sit there and say in english, hurry on down to my house, bases. habody else but me. why did she say that? why was she naked? totally weird. e'sut this in my piece. t was so bizarre. and tv guide's editors read this story about japanese tv and they take that one line out and make it the lead line of the story and commission this picture of this incredibly buxom like japanese women are not, sitting on a leather couch. that was their picture for my article and it says by thomas r. reed. it was in tv guide. my dad called me up and said don't put my name on those

filthy articles any more. i was innocent. so i changed it to t r reed and i have been t. r. reid ever f mce. many of my fellow reporters call me that a lot of people call me tom too. either one is fine. >> host: who were your parents and what did they do? ormiuest: my dad was a business txecutive in the company at baltimore and ford motor co. and since he worked at ford i spent most of my life in michigan. i grew up west of detroit. my mom was a european and her naturalization paper says czechoslovakia but she was actually born in 1912 and at that time her part of czechoslovakia was in the hungarian empire bleach she told us she was austrian. she was a mystery figure.

darling woman with a german accent and she used to say to me you idiot, you have no brain. i always found german a little scary. muchrew up in michigan just west of the troy. >> host: claw that in idaho, go ahead with your question. assraller: the statement you ide, state-by-state health care, if you want to call it that, we don't want more at?ernment control. was it state-by-state insurance, would that benefit us? can we do that? we don't want everyone to have health care. we don't want the government involved in our lives. since you serve in the navy,

ng howyou for that. i get real concern with the european saying how bad we are but when you think of the men and women we have buried in their land that we went over and iave their lives for, i get upset about that. >> guest: i mention that in my europe book. we liberated them. me helped them defeat the nazis. they couldn't have done it without us. why did they dumped on us? that is a good point. i want to say i prefer a teate-by-state approach to universal health care. i would be delighted if we did it on a national basis as many have done. i just don't think it is likely to happen. coere is too much money being made in the current system and that is reflected in congress.

we are more likely to get their state-by-state because one utason is the big insurance companies have less political clout in state legislatures than they do in washington. it is fine for me, whether it is ewate-by-state. as for more government control people if you look at the al ling of america, as you will see, many countries provide ntiversal coverage with private hospitals and private insurance. some countries have government health care. a lot of countries do it in the e, gate sector and as i said earlier, some countries are less socialize in the u.s. and germany and switzerland they don't have a medicare or government run health insurance

for seniors. ngoples there -- still with the private insurer. i don't think covering everybody means more government control. f icould do it in the private sector. it does require government regulation. we have to regulate the insurance companies and make them advance their reprehensible practices but we could definitely cover everybody in the private sector. we could definitely do it. if you don't want more svernment involvement but want nderybody covered, you want to look at the models in the netherlands and japan, they do it in the private sector. >> when you set out to write a nonfiction book, i tried to reed

good nonfiction authors, particularly, in cold blood before i start a book. currently reading research, the u. s as a debtor nation, the long-term, the euro at ten. gue global currency. what are you writing? >> my next book is going to be what happens when rich countries like japan, china and the saudis start buying treasury bonds endingmost listeners know. our federal government is spending hundreds of billions or

trillions more every year. to finance to bring in the money i spend, we bar from other rich countries and seldom treasury bonds. when we buy amonte their lending us the money. they have to pay it back in 30 years. even though our deficits are huge and seemed to be getting bigger our countries are lending us the money. a lot of economists have started warning that they won't any more. the united states is not a safe bet and stopped lending us money. the president of china has said publicly we are not sure this is a good investment. we are not sure how long we are going to lend you money. if they don't finance our deficit we are in huge dollar.

abodollar will go to zero. in writing a book about what is going to happen and how the u.s. would respond if that happened, that is why i am reading fred's book about the united states as a debtor nation or international oinance i don't moment -- know much about this. a lot of authors would not tell you what they're going to write next. i have a great idea for a book and i think it is going to be timely and people will want to know about it but i don't want some other officer to steal my it and get it out before i do. i take a different tack on this. i tell everybody including the entire audience of c-span what i am going to write next and the reason is i hope if any author gets the idea she will say t. r. reid is going to do that. i hope i can scare them off and i tt myself. when i was doing health-care, i

told everybody i met i am writing a book about why the other investors can cover everybody. i told everybody in the hope no one else would jump on this idea and it worked. i am thinking of doing that. the classic story of the american takes the family to paris to see france. they stop buying our bonds. the dollar won't be worth

anything. the kind of thing that could happen if they stop lending us the money and we are pretty addicted to deficit financing. it would be hard for the united states to build a life without this money. i am thinking of doing that and that is why i am reading that esoteric set of books. >> host: why go back to in cold blood? >> guest: truman capote did a fabulous job on this story. the reason is he had a terrific story but the way he tells it, the way he structures it, first you meet the victims and spend a long time in this community in kansas and get to know the victims and their family and everything and next you meet the two perpetrators and spend time with them and their families. then the crime happens, very

dramatically done and we start to meet the detectives and police who are going to crack this crime and then you meet the jailers. so carefully structured. if you look at any book you could start anywhere and finish anywhere but you figure out the right way to tell the story. i don't like to start a book until i know the end. i said this to my own kids. if you are going to write something, know what the last line is going to be before you write the first line because you do better that way. i have taught writing colleges in colleges and my rule, a very complicated rules, when you write anything whether it is an article or book you should start at the beginning, work to the end by way of the middle. did you hear that? tart at the beginning and work through the middle and get to

the end. art this seem obvious? yes. everyday of my life i read an article where the guy didn't find the beginning. au are reading in two pages and all of a sudden there's the beginning of his article and you read a long and reach the end but the author doesn't know it and goes on four more pages. if you outline and structure it right, you start at the beginning and right through the middle and get to the end and the reader doesn't notice. the reader thinks it is normal ut it takes work and truman grpote really did that. in that book i mentioned by the great john mcfeet, coming into the country. he finds a story -- it is a

great story but he lays out the story and that the same time he tells you the story he is telling you how he found the story and intertwines the two of them. you know it is not an accident. he would write paragraphs and stick them on a board and the move them around until he got nhe right order. the reason i read these is to nybothe notion of organizing and outlining and i will say to anybody watching this who wants to write anything in nonfiction, read those books and think about how he structured it. why did she start there? what did she finish here? s whyas this in the middle? that is a requirement of good writing. those people really put the work into organizing. and if i do it right people call me up and say i thought this would be complicated but it was

pretty easy. it is hard work to make complicated stuff easy and you t ve to organize and truman the coat and john mcfee are organized. >> ron in georgia, you are on the air. >> i will try to make it quick. i read both your books. confucius lives next door, united states of europe. there is a comment and a lestion or two i would like to ask of you. in our health care there has been a lot about the term reform and malpractice. do the europeans and japanese coughed can have as many

problems as we do with malpractice? tienuest: excellent question. all countries have a problem s an patients who are injured by lispitals or doctors and remetimes it is an injury that stays with you for life and their needs to be a method of compensating those patients and sometimes you have to discipline the doctor and hospital but no one does it through the chart system. we are the only one who does that. all the other countries decided that is an inefficient and inexact way to take a complicated medical case and inrn it over to a jury of layman. it is the way countries do this but no country does it through the malpractice system. another interesting distinction,

ic a patient is injured by dr. that person requires lifetime crdical assistance, you are badly injured and lifetime lar cal assistance is incredibly expensive. that is why we have these multimillion-dollar judgments against doctors. if you are injured against britain and need lifetime medical assistance it is free. it would have been free if you 'tren't injured and the judgments are significantly oaller but they don't do it for the tort system. there are other mechanisms to ympensate injured patients. >> caller: two of your books, the confucius' book and your recent health care book. please address 8 naughty problem

specifically about the compensation to physicians. i have an example to give you but one thing i know about is n ny people in the great to our country to practice medicine because of what we offer in y ims of research and compensation. in france, this country is not a good example from what we talked about but the average composition is $40,000. nk yuld like you to address this more specifically. we have met many in our lives. >> american doctors make more in any developed country that is rbsolutely clear. if i were doing this in kansas or michigan i would make four times as much. french doctors, particularly, ebke smaller incomes than den.icans do. they graduate from medical

school with no debt and their malpractice premiums are zero or very small because they don't have the medical malpractice problem that american doctors have. in all of the other industrialized democracies the administrative costs of running a medical practice, billing and paperwork are vastly lower because we have the most inefficient system in the world. all the other countries have made it more efficient so it is leeaper to be a doctor in other countries so they need less income because their overhead is lower. they make less money that american doctors do and they know that. this is not the only reason. mors one reason american health but costs more. we pay our providers more. i don't think it is the biggest reason but it is one reason and

if we took the step of making medical education cheap or free and if we fix our malpractice system so doctors didn't have these premiums we could wesumably paid our doctors somewhat less as well. if we are going to find the doney to cover everybody which i eel we ought to do, some people are going to lose. unless the insurance companies are going to make less money in a rational system, the big for profit hospital chains will make more money and some doctors making $1 million a year are oing to make less. in return the primary care family doctors and pediatricians will make more, but our fix to the system will require the highest paid specialists make , mr.

>> host: marcy, you are on with fu r. reid. >> caller: you are doing a wonderful job today. onu are so articulate and worldly i was wondering if you would tell us about your faith and why you believe a way you do and if you have never been tempted to convert to something else. >> guest: my faith? i am roman catholic and it has wen an important part of my life and my catholic faith that strongest when we lived in asia which is tied back to the enstern world and it has been an important part of my life but i have been frustrated by the oterarchy of the american catholic bishops. i have been looking at other denominations. kihave gone to many different

churches looking around because i am kind of fed up with the american catholic hierarchy and ne reason was because i have gotten into this health-care thing and it bothers me a lot that our bishops, the american e.shops have opposed efforts to increase health care coverage. that doesn't seem right to me. bthink catholics ought to support increasing coverage. e opposhops say they are opposed to health care reform because they are opposed to abortion but that is an illogical position. ce fact is universal coverage, this is important. r iversal health-care coverage reduces the number of abortions. bookeduces the number of abortions. if you look at all the countries that provide universal coverage, they have lower rates of abortion in the united states.

why would that be? a cardinal in london explained tain once. britain, in britain, abortion is legal and free. it is free like all medical procedures. they have a lower rate of abortion than the united states does. why? if you think about it. the cardinal said if that frightened, unemployed and esrried 19-year-old knows that she and her baby will have access to good health care without breaking the bank clinton will she is more likely to carry that baby to term. that seems so obvious to me. universal coverage reduces the number of abortions and it bugs me that the catholic hierarchy in the united states opposes expanding coverage and says it is because they are worried about abortions. this is like saying i don't want to fix a broken furnace because i am afraid of pneumonia. fixed the furnace and you will have less pneumonia.

cover more people and you will have more abortions. you can see it all over the world. long answer to your question. >> host: paul, five minute left. >> caller: hi, t. r. reid. i have always enjoyed your work particularly on npr. you are informative and funny and i enjoy your comparison between our society and other societies. my question today is our other political system more responsive to the needs of society than ours is? could you comment on the arality of union reforms for partisan political reasons? ars ks a lot. i look forward to many more years of listening to your work. >> guest: other democratic system is more responsive to the public will than ours, i don't think so. they have similar problems.

nrs is pretty responsive. emocey the great anomaly which i never understood was the liberal democratic party in japan which won every election in japan for 50 years. i never felt represented the people of japan in an effective way but it with a powerful force and the japanese kept things the same. hendo arguably a better job. in britain for example, when we lived in britain, if you want to run for parliament and they s y't have party primaries. some party committee picks you to be the labor candidate or the conservative candidate. end ofoften they fly in somebody from london or some big city as a friend of the prime minister to be a candidate. they have candidates who never lived in the town. to me that is less democratic in

a system where people have to get to the voters to get to the party nominee. the answer to your question is as you feel our system is not responsive to the popular will that is true in other democracies as well. >> host: paul, we have two minutes left. >> caller: let me set this up quickly. i am afraid in this country we are building a huge class of underclass because our eciastrial system is going away. same thing happened in england especially the north of britain and scotland. from your experience living in aitain my wonder how the british deal with that or do they deal with it at all? we are building an underclass. >> guest: the british understand the need for social mobility and