it's my pleasure to welcome you, students, alumni, friends and faculty to celebrate the book launch of our distinguished professor of american foreign policy, michael mandelbaum coming here with his esteemed÷ co-author, "new york times" columnist and pulitzer prize winning author, transitory. it is a great pleasure to welcome tom back to this podium. those of you who are the readers of tom friedman's column and i know that includes a lot in this audience already know of the friendship of our two authors. they seem to have the best of bonds. based on intellectual respect unactivated at their mutual pleasure finding ways to explain the world's problems through brilliant writing. that is both understandable and entertaining to the laymen and expert alike. i greatly enjoyed this most

recent book, which combines so much of what we have admired in each of them before. as i told professor mandelbaum, my only regret was that i did not start underlying all the best meta-forms and turns of phrase from chapter one onwards. i think we should sponsor a web-based event with competition for the top 10 and i know we would have at least 50 entries. in my reading, that used to bs. as a presidential platform waiting to be a top did and shared with the wider public. as you know from the last chapter or perhaps you don't know, but i still discover, our authors are not necessarily expect change either party to seize on the real agenda before us and perhaps we'll hear more about their hopes for how electoral change will take place in the form at the third name on the ballot that this important juncture in our history. but you've come here to spend as much time as possible with our dynamic duo. so let me begin the program with

an introduction of my colleague, professor michael mandelbaum any internal introduced his friend and co-author, professor mandelbaum and founder of the school of american foreign policy and direct her of the american policy program. he is one of america's leading authorities on international affairs and is known for his extract variability to explain with great clarity the meaning and the consequence of complex developments and trends. the world affairs council of america named him one of the most influential people in american foreign policy. he's the author and co-author of over a dozen books. just in the last 10 years he began with the ideas that conquered the world, peace, democracy and free markets in the in the 21st century, which has been translated into seven languages, including arabic and chinese in the furcal superpower, his 12th book, the

one before this one was published in 2010. professor mandelbaum and professor friedman, welcome. professor mandelbaum come at a is yours. [applause] >> well, thank you. we are going to do a sequential duet. and i'm going to speak seconds. so let me introduce the first speaker. i will be brief because to this audience into a d.c. andóóóó audiences well, he really needs noó introduction.óóóóóóó my friend and co-author, thomasó friedman is the foreign affairs columnistoó at "the new yorkó times."óóóó he is a three-time pulitzer prize winner.ó he is the author of fiveóóoó previous books, all extremely influential, all bestsellers, including from beirut to jerusalem and the world is flat.

tom, it is a pleasure to welcome you. the floor is yours. [applause] >> michael, thank you very much. can y'all hear me? it's great to be back here. thanks for having us. i didn't know if the professor but i am now on i'm going to keep that pocketed. so, what michael and i will do is a sequential duet appeared were going to break up the book. this is how we wrote it and try to give you a basic overview of a look forward to taking questions. now when we have been on the road for a few weeks now, whenever people hear the title of her book, "that used to be us," the first thing they ask is does it have a happy ending?

and we tell everybody, it absolutely does. we just don't know whether it is fiction or nonfiction. [laughter] that really depends on mass. now, you might askhim a hobby to foreign-policy monks end up writing a book about domestic american politics and policy? and the answer as jessica hinted is that michael and i are old friends and we are neighbors at bethesda and we've basically been having a 20 year running conversation about foreign policy. often interacted with honey, i am on the phone with michael. can you just wait a second? and we started to notice something in the last couple of years. we would start out every conversation talking about the world, but we would end every conversation talking about america. and we've basically realized after a while that america come

its faith in the future, vigor and vitality really is the biggest foreign policy issue in the world. and unless we really tackle that and thought that through, we really couldn't think clearly about foreign policy. michael and i are both american nationals. we really do believe that america plays a pivotal role in holding up the global system. we are the tentpole that holds up the world for better or worse than than we think are most of the time and in most places were much better. we provide enormous local governments for the world and michael is written about that in his last book. but we are convinced that at this time pull buckles or phrase, your kids won't just grow up in a different america. they will growth in a different world. they will growth in a a fundamentally different world if we cannot provide the american

dream for another generation. after all, when britain went into decline, america was there to pick up the pieces and really provide that global governance. if we now go into decline, who is there to pick up the pieces? so michael and i are movie buffs. michael in particular actually and we have a lot of movie references in the book. and there is one in particular that really captures for us kind of the pivotal moment from the 1958 classic touch of evil, starring orson welles. a movie about murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and corruption in town on the mexican-american border which as you call please the cricket which is your call please the cricket which is your call please the cricket proves his mexican counterpart for murder. at one point he stumbles into a brothel and finds the proprietor , marlene dietrich who is also a fortuneteller with

cards spread out in front of her. read my future for me, wells says. you haven't done any she replies. your future is all you've done. it was really that fear about our own country that prompted us to rate this book. now let me jump right to the conclusion. we do not believe that is the case. we certainly don't believe it is inevitable, but it was out of concern about our future and how we think it through and how we do what is necessary to make sure it is not all used up that brought michael and i to write this book. and so let me share it to the first two paragraphs because it really frames the whole book. the opening chapter is called, if you see something, say some pain. this is a book about america

that begins in china. in september 2010, tom intended economic conference here five years earlier, it can mean to jen jen and bought a three and half our right to a chinese version of detroit. but things have changed. navigate to 10 january to the beijing station and ultramodern pint-size saucer with glass walls and older are covered for 3246 solar panels. you buy a ticket from an electronic kiosk, offering choices in chinese and english and you border world-class high-speed train that makes the trip 72 miles in 29 minutes. the conference itself took place at the beijing convention, massive beautifully appointed structure the like of which exist in few american cities as it to convention center wasn't impressive enough, the conference cosponsors gave some facts and figures about it. they noted it contained a total floor area of 2.5 billion square feet and construction of the

beijing convention center starting on september 15, 2009 and was completed in may 2010. as i read those lines, i walked around since september, october, november, december. that is 8.5 months. returning home to maryland from the trip i was describing in how quickly it was built to michael. at one point and interrupted it excuse me, tom. have you been to a subway stop lately? now we live in bethesda and nothing is the metro subway to get to work in downtown washington. i had just been at the station and knew exactly what he was talking about. the two escalators there had been under repair for nearly six months. [laughter] the one being fixed as close, the other had to be shut off and converted into a two-way stare crease. the rush hour this created a huge mess.

everyone trying to get on or off at discrete single file down one escalator that the other and sometimes took 10 minutes just to get out of the station. a sign on the closed escalators at the repairs were part of a massive modernization project. what was taking this modernization projects along? reinvestigated kathy asado spokeswoman that the repairs were scheduled to take six months and are on schedule. they need 10 to 12 weeks to fix each escalator. a simple comparison made a startling point. it's a china's construction group 32 weeks to build a world-class convention center from from the ground up, including giant escalators in every corner. and it was taken the washington metro grew 24 weeks to repair two tiny escalators of 21 steps each. we searched further and found on november 14 the "washington post" ran a letter to the editor or mark thompson of kensington,

maryland amateur writer. he wrote, someone was written matcher for more than 30 years second and have an easier way to assess the health of the escalators. for decades they been silently and efficiently. over the past several years, when the escalators are running, each in our guillotine cards have generated horrific noises that sound to me like a tremendous source of extra did make her pay, screeching@screeds. [laughter] the quote we found most disturbing was from a maryland community news story about the long lines at rush hour. it quoted benjamin ross, a matcher writer as saying, my impression standing on line there people have sort of gotten used to it. people have sort of gotten used to it. indeed that sense of resignation, the sense that this is how things are in america today, the sense that america's best days are behind in china's best days are ahead have become

the subject of watercooler grocery line and classroom conversations all across america today. certainly by the idea of increasingly popular in some they written on the 19th century they dominated the 20th century and will inevitably reign supreme in the 21st century and now we have to do is fly from 10 jan in shanghai to washington and take the subway? now, we do not did we witness but to explain why no american, young or old should reside himself or herself to the view either. the two of us are not pessimist when it comes to america and its we are optimists, though we are frustrated. we are too frustrated optimist. the title of this opening or is, if you see something, say something. that is the mantra of the department of homeland security plays over and over a month speakers in airports and railroad stations around the country. we have seen and heard something and millions of americans have,

too. but we've seen this on a suspicious package left under a stairwell. what we have seen is hiding in plain sight. we've seen something that possesses a greater threat to national security and well-being that anything outside it does receive a country with enormous potential of falling into the worst sort of decline, a slow decline, just low enough for us to not drop everything and pull together to fix what needs fixing. this book is our way of saying something about what is wrong, why things have gone wrong in what we can and must do to make them right. my goal. -- michael. >> america faces for large challenges. and those challenges of the spine that used to be after the book is organized around them. the first of these is the challenge posed by globalization

which among other things has brought 2 billion more workers into the global workforce over the last two decades. the second challenge comes from the revolution in information technology, with which we are all familiar and is part of our daily lives and which has among other things stripped away whole categories of jobs that hundreds of thousands, really millions of americans used to do and at which they use to make the funding. those jobs are now gone and they are not coming back and that's a huge challenge. the third challenge stems from the chronic annual deficits that the american government runs and the national debt that piles higher every year, the results of the accumulation of those annual deficits. now, those of us in washington are familiar with the federal budget deficit, which is to

ensure the most serious of them, but it's not the only one. it is important to note that although the united states various state and municipal governments that have made commitments for pensions and other benefits in the future that they cannot possibly pay. deficits and debt are not simply a federal problem. the fourth and final challenge is the one that stems from our pattern of energy consumption, our enormous reliance on fossil fuels and the impact of the burning of fossil fuels on the world environment and on its climate. now the stakes in meeting these challenges were failing to meet them could not be higher. the extent to which we as americans can meet these challenges will determine the rate of economic growth, the

united states enjoys in the future. and where the rate of american economic growth is concerned, the old saying applies. lots of things are more important than money and they all cost money. in particular, the rate of economic growth in the united states will determine whether the current generation of americans is able to pass on to the succeeding generation, a country in which it is possible to do even better than the current generation has done. this is commonly known as the american dream. and the american dream today is very much in play and very much at risk. and the american dream has been the core of the kind of society of the united states has been for almost two centuries. but the implications for the six

vessels variola the country have been meeting these challenges goes beyond the american standard of living. as tom noted, the whole world is at stake in the sense that as both of us believe, the united states plays a unique and uniquely valuable role in the world at the extensive foreign policy of the united states is as tom said, the tent at the extensive foreign policy of the united states is as tom said, the tent at the extensive foreign policy of the united states is as tom said, the tent the international system and the international system has political and economic dimensions are today more benig[ for all the difficulties they have that has ever been the case wç history.wçwçwçwçwçwçwç if the united states cannot sustain economic growth, we will not have the resources or the political will to sustain this vital global role. and if that happens, everyone will live in a world that is more dangerous and less

prosperous. so the stakes, as i say could not be higher. how are we doing in meeting these challenges? not very well. we are not measuring up to the task. and for this, there are a number of reasons. we devote a chat to her of that used to be asked to explaining why we've done so badly on what is our national agenda. the reason is we misread the end of the cold war. we thought the end of the cold war with the greatest work of triumph for the united states and indeed it was, but it is also some enough. it ushered in a world in which the united states would phase and data space unprecedented challenges. those challenges unfortunately we have all but it poured. moreover, some of these challenges are subtle, incremental, almost invisible. we have overlooked them in one of the purposes of the book is

to call them to people's attention. and there is a third reason we are doing very poorly in meeting our basic challenges. and that is for most of them in one way or another, some kind of sacrifices required. and we as a people, we as a country for a number of reasons that we outlined in the book has gotten out of the habit of sacrificing. and that will take an enormous toll in future generations if we can't recover our commitment to do what is necessary to secure the future. well, there is another problem the country faces and date to receive the chapter in that used to be yes. we have gotten away from what tom and i regard as having been key to america's economic and social success over the last two centuries and more. it is what we call our formula for public private partnership

for prosperity. it has had and continues to have five eighths at cards. the first part is education. historically, the united states has educated as workforce and educated population up to the level of technology said that americans could take advantage of whatever the existing technology he was to become the most workforce in the world. second, the united states has always invested in infrastructure. from the building of the erie canal to the beginning of the 19th century, this country has always built through public private partnership to bask in novels, roads, highways, superhighways and airports in the world. and these elements at the country's infrastructure formed

the framework for a vigorous commercial activity. third, especially since world war ii, the united states has invested heavily in research and development to push outward the frontiers of knowledge and develop innovation that can be used commercially to bring to market new products, new services and thereby sustain american economic growth. the fourth part of the formula is in immigration. for most of our history, not all of it, but most of it we have had an immigration policy that attract good, welcomed and retained what we call high i.q. risk takes, people able to discover new things and start new businesses that have contributed enormously to america's success. fifth and finally, we've always driven to have initially have had an appropriate regulatory environment. we have had regulation strict enough to prevent dangerous

excesses such as those we experience in the financial system in 2008, but also a regulatory system not so straight and not so confining us to suppress and discourage the risk-taking and innovation upon which economic growth depends. what we have gotten away from that formula. we haven't renewed it. we have every invested it. in some ways, we have forgotten it. in order to prosper in this century, we have to get back and bring it up today. well, all for challenges are important, but we believe over the long term, the most important challenge for the united states is the one created by the merger of globalization and the information technology revolution. and tom will tell you aboutyyyyy that.

>> so, one of the fun things for me in working on this book, really to go back and think about what it has been to the four essays that are of the world in 2004 because that was really what we meant by the merger in 1950. the world had gotten cannot did. so when we sat down to work on this book and particularly this chapter on the new challenge of the merger of globalization in i.t., i went back to the first edition of the world is flat, which i started in 2004. and i cracked open the book and looked in the index and i discovered facebook was not in it. so as i was out there saying the world is flat -- the world is flat. faced with good access. 4g was a parking place, linked

in with the president come applications that you sent to college and for most people, skype was a typo. [laughter] all of that happened in just the last six years. none of those exist less than a decade ago. so what's really happened in the world and i think we would agree it was actually the most important thing that has happened in the world in the last 10 years, but it had been under the mask of the 2008 subprime crisis and 9/11 was that the world actually went from connect it to hyper connected. that is actually what happened and i have fundamentally revolutionized last time i had a booktalk thursday cameraman behind the camera. there is that one now.

david cross is not to mexico or china, but to the past. that is what the globalization i.t. is all about. you see this a little stories in the newspaper. i love collecting these things. an october 2010 i was reading the times in the morning and there was a little ad in there. it reported that a nepali telecommunications firm had just started providing her generation three g mobile network services at the summit of mount everest, the world's tallest mountain. the story noted that the service would allow thousands of climbers and truckers who up to the region every year access to high-speed internet and video calls from the summit of mount everest using their mobile

phone. can you imagine the number of calls that begin., mongol never believe for a calling from. the hyper connection of the world shows up in other ways as well. another smile i don't in "the new york times" about six months ago reported that grinnell college, a wonderful small liberal arts college in central iowa might mother was later chairman of the board. grenell college, one out of 10 applications came from china. of that committee of 1600 students that one added 10 for the class of 2011 came from china and 50% of those had perfect eight hundreds on a math test. so when i wrote the world is flat, i said you're really not just competing now. now you are literally competing for a place that grinnell.

but someone at pf 21 in shanghai, someone at toll state university in moscow. you are literally now competing head to head with them in this hyper connected world. what does that mean for the work place? because of my cannot decide it was before we talk about education, we actually talk to employers and say what does that mean for the work place. this is the biggest section of the book on education of four. we like movies and so the first is caught up in the air. many of you saw that movie, where george clooney plays a weekend whose job is to going there and firing people face-to-face. he loses his job when his new assistant figures out a more efficient way to do that with the internet.

that movie is the movie of our time. what happens with the workplace when it's connected. if you have the kind of scales, problem-solving and creative thinking scales to take advantage of this hyper connecting, you'll be fine. but if you don't know, there is nothing for you. the labor market gets divided into three broad segments. the first are people of non-routine scales. that is what all of you aspire to, what i aspire to. these are people are doctors, lawyers coming musicians, artists, accountants, professors, journalists, people

who do things that cannot be described by an algorithm and therefore cannot be outsourced, automated, robot incised were digitized. because basically what happens when the road goes from connect it to hyper good is that if you imagine the world was like one of professor mandelbaum's class here at johns hopkins, the whole curve has risen. the whole curve has risen because every employee are now, like the people who run c-span now have access to cheaper and cheaper, more and more powerful automation, resources, productivity tools, robots and not just cheap labor, but cheap genius. so the whole curve rises. so we all have to rise with that. we all have to find something

extra. those are those non-routine scales and jobs that won't be outsourced, automate it,yqwy digitizer robot incised are given to a foreign worker. in the middle of course for reaching jobs in those there being just crashed. the cameraman turns out was a routine job. it could be robot incised. it has been robot incised. whatever can be done will be done. and that has been done. those jobs have collapsed. the other end of this that trend by people who of non-routine scales that are local to have to be done face to face. that's the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. and they are scales will depend on the health of your local economy. but those are the three categories. now what we really discovered is that the big change -- we only discovered from a connected world to a hyper connected world

is what we are demanding now! from those two nonroutine workers, those at the top called creators and those at the bottom called servers. and what we discovered is that every employer now is looking for the same employee. they are looking for people who have nonroutine critical thinking and problem solving scales in order to get an interview. they are looking not just for creators, not just accountants and lawyers and scientists, they are looking for creative creators, creative lawyer, creative scientist and a kuwaiti journalist, creative professor. jessica can use all this technology to bring in and don't

think that ain't going to happen in the next five years. you have to be creative nonroutine. the fan is on the other end. to be a server you have to be a creative server. the way we discovered this was in the next chapter is called help wanted. he went two for generic employers then we asked them, what are you looking for? we went to a high of white-collar firm of washington, head of the office of a big national law firm, nick's in peabody. we went to a lower firm, the outsourcing firm in india where i wrote "the world is flat." we went to a blue-collar firm, dupont. in dsl for them the same question, what are you looking for? and as i said, they looking for people he can do critical thinking and problem-solving in order to get an interview

because what all four are actually looking for the explainer people who can not only to the job, it's a complex task, but invents, reinventing reengineer the job as they are doing it. because when the world gets this hyper cannot did, change happens so quickly that the big box above, he or she cannot possibly know what's going on. therefore they need every employee to actually be an innovator. we interviewed jeff laskin flask and that of the law firm could one of the first thing is that it's the the chief innovation officer. say what? the law firm when outgunned by -- hired a chief innovation officer. was that about quite fancy cabinet to decimate subprime crisis. we were out for dinner and he said tom, business is awful.

we have to lay people off. i said that's interesting. who gets laid off first in a law firm? is at last in first out? he said not anymore. now the people getting laid off are who and the height of the credit bubble who had although work, we gave them that pile of work and they did that and handed it back. they did it in a nonroutine way and handed it back. some of them are gone. the ones we keep are those who came to us and says jeff, we can get this new work -- hold work in a new way or we could do new work in a new way. michael and i were fuddy-duddies. we are old fuddy-duddies. we have the pleasure and a great opportunity when we graduated from school to find a job. you will have to invent a job. that's the big difference. it may not be your first job you have to invent, but to keep that job, you will have to invent.

their firms in silicon valley the two quarterly reviews of their employees. if you go through five product cycles come you can't wait to the end to discover a coupon or wherever that you have a bad team leader. you can get crushed by the end of the year. so everybody needs people who can invent, reinventing reengineer their job. one of the most interesting examples is given to us by the head of the green color for. his name is general martin dempsey. you may have heard general dempsey's name recently because he is about to become the new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, her senior military officer. at the time he was head of the u.s. army education core. but he is even more interesting history. general dempsey commanded the first command that took saddam hussein from baghdad in 2003. five years later he was commander of centcom, the whole middle east military operation.

and that your 2008 he went on to visit a forward base in afghanistan commanded by cat income is somewhere the hindu kush. he spends an hour with the captain and realized after the out was that the captain out there near the hindu kush in its little bays have access to more intelligence at the national and tactical level and more fire power than he martin dempsey detonated that debt from saddam hussein in 2003. and therefore he realized how we educate that cat didn't and how we choose that captain has to be very different from before. the first thing he did was introduce the idea of giving recruits at boot camp and iphone. first you get your iphone. maybe within three weeks to drill sergeant will tell you download the app, you teach the lesson. i am sitting in the front row. so they have completely

revolutionized the army of ablution cooler of how to reconnect every one to produce their extra to not only do their job, but be able to invent an reengineer the job that they're doing it. now, this is a huge education challenge for us now because what it means and this is the next chapter, which we call home or times two because american dream is hallmarked times one is not going to do it anymore. we have to education challenges. we need to bring about a month to the ever so much quicker because we have so many people who are below average. in this world where you have to be creative creator or creative server, if you do not have a high school degree that allows you to get through some kind of two to four year college without much remediation, there is nothing there for you. we are speaking here at johns

hopkins, but the mothership of baltimore, very interesting. 50 years ago, what was the biggest employer in baltimore?ñ/ is a company called bethlehem steel. you can get a job without a hig/ school degree. union. join the5/ you can have a good salary, buy a house, have two kids coming yar, dog and retire. you go through the whole cycle without a high school degree and certainly with a high school degree. but the biggest employer in baltimore today? john hopkins university medical center. they don't let you cut the grass there without aba. [laughter] you can't mow the lawn here without aba. so what will be, so we have to challenges. need to bring on a and bring average so much higher to the global average with reticular emphasis on what tony wagner calls the three c's of education. creativity, communication and

collaboration so you have people who can not only do their job, but invents and read vent on the spot. as alan komen, battered dupont says to us in the book, i need every employee now to be present, to be present all the time. because in this hyper connected world and this is the last job there of the four, average is officially over. what happens when the road gets this hyper connected and your next boss has access to that robot or automation or digitization averages over. the big time that 80% or 90% has shown up is no longer applicable. a future show up your job, you are not going to have that job or thrive in that job much

longer. in texas if all you've ever do is all you've ever done is all you've got a not too is no longer applicable. if all you ever do is all you've ever done, trust me this hyper connected world is all you'll get is not a ui for god. you will get a low average. we are now all living in garrison keillor's, where all the men are strong, all the women are beautiful and all the children are above average. average is officially over. and so what this means for education is two things as i said. we need to bring the bottom two are average and we need to bring our average so much higher. one requires more education. the other requires better education. we conclude this dirt by trying to think through, what is the right mode for educators as they

think about describing an inspiring their kids to drive in. and we would leave you with just sort of three attitudinal points that we should suggest. think like a new anagram. think like a new anagram. think like an artisan and think like a waitress at perkins pancake house in minneapolis just off highway 100. what do i mean? first of all, we all need to think like new immigrants. the new democrat thinks that come to this country and there is no legacy spot waiting for me at john's hot and. the new immigrants understand that he or she is in a new world and friends, we are in a new world here the hyper connected world. we are on the immigrants and new immigrants as i better figure

out what's going on in this country. i better see where the opportunities are in a better pursue them with more energy and vigor in speed than anybody else. we are all new immigrants today. approach the work place like a new immigrant. second, think like an artisan. that is an idea that lawrence katz, professor of labor economics at harvard is going. whether he basically says, who is the artisan? the artisan within the communication before mass manufacturing. the artisan made every thing off, every pair of shoes, every saddle, and the utensil. and the best artisans took such pride in their work they brought something so picture to their work they insisted on curbing their initials into it. do your job every day in a way that you would want to carve your initials into it the end of the day. that is what insulates you from

the outsourced automated digitized or about his size. lastly, not everyone can invent software like steve jobs or start a company, but never went above average at some. everyone can find their extra somewhere. maybe it's employee at the nursing home. anyone who is that e.g. parent in a nursing home knows how much she would i for that one nurse or health care worker who actually engages your aging parents and puts a smile on their face. that is their extra. everyone has some extra they can earn. and i really learned is in being on a visit home. i'm from minneapolis and having breakfast at perkins pancake house at highway 100 minneapolis, my best and, can we are for having bribed bissonnet ordered three buttermilk pancakes and scrambled eggs. camcorder three buttermilk pancakes and fruit.

and after 15 minutes the waitress came, put the plates down and simply say to ken, i give you extra for her. she got a 50% tip from us. because that waitress, god bless her, she didn't control much, but she controlled the fruit ladle and that was her extra. everybody has got to find that extra. and i know what you're thinking. you are thinking very easy for you to say mr. "new york times" columnist. [laughter] i was born at night, but not last night. i know what you're thinking. you don't understand. i inherited james reston's office at the washington bureau of "the new york times." what a thrill. i got to meet him once. i suspect though that the

1960s and 70s and say to himself, i wonder what my southern competitors are going to write me? by the way, depending on seven. i do the same thing. i come to the office every day and asked, i wonder what my 70 million competitors are going to write today. because if i cannot write other than the best indian columnist or blogger when i am writing about india or the best iraqi, you can go to real fair politics. you can just end up right on your screen are right next to my column, so we are all caught up in minutes. we all need to find their extra because average really is over. it's been back we have perhaps

some excuse for not addressing the fact delete the first two challenges, the challenge of globalization in the i.t. revolution. the combination is in some ways subtle and to place underneath the radar of great poetical sense. it's not always easy to know how best to adapt to these challenges, but when -- were the third of the challenges are concerned, challenges the deficit and debt in the energy and climate, we have no such excuse. these are not hidden, not subtle. they are well known and yet, really for the last two decades and especially for the last decade, not only have we not been addressing these two challenges affect only, some of us in some cases many of us influential people have been denying that they even exist. we have a quote from vice

president cheney, or former vice president cheney in speaking with dan secretary of the treasury, paul o'neill who is objecting to another tax cut that the administration was proposing because he thought the country couldn't afford it. and cheney said to them, you don't understand. reagan proved that deficits don't matter. and as for energy and our climate, recent surveys show that almost half of all americans believe that global warming at the impact of human that cavity, especially the burning of fossil fuels on the world's climate is just an ugly rumor or a hoax that doesn't exist. well, what if that were true? would that every true that deficits on global warming doesn't exist, but unfortunately it is not true. they do matter and it does exist

and we are going to have to come to terms with them in ways we haven't even gotten to do. now were deficits are turned, whatever else may be said for, you can store about tea party, at least it has focused the attention of the national government on our problem at deficits and cumulative national debt. and yet, even though the political class, the congress and the president are seized with this issue come are focused on a talk about it all the time, none of them has presented the kind of approach that is necessary to cope with this challenge. what is necessary is a three-part approach. first, we have to cut spending. and that means reducing federal programs. important programs, valuable

programs, programs on which good people, decent people, hard-working people realize. we are going to have to make adjustments in our two major so-called entitlement programs. social security and medicare. because as they are structured now, we simply cannot afford them. and anybody who says that we can go on as we are but these two programs is not been serious about this challenge. the second, we also need more revenues. we are going to have to collect more in taxes. that doesn't necessarily mean raising marginal rates on contact his or at least not raising them all that high. we can probably get a lot of revenue by closing loopholes and we can certainly get some other kind of tax that tom and i strongly advocate and not used to be us. and that is an energy tax.

but one way or another, we are going to need more revenue. and anybody who says we don't, that we can go along with the tax structure just as it is is not being serious. but those two measures by themselves will not assure our future. we also have to make investments in our historic formula. we may need to spend more money on education at the primary and secondary bubble and we certainly have to spend more money on infrastructure by the estimate of the american society of civil engineers, the infrastructure deficit in the united states today, the amount of money it would cost just to bring us up to par is $2.2 trillion. and we certainly also have spent more money on research and development to generate the innovations that will lead to the new products and services that the 21st century.

so we need all three of these things that nobody is proposing that. as for climate change, well, we know for sure that the geophysical phenomenon at its heart, known as global warming is real. we know that certain key trapping gases form the earth atmosphere. they reflect heat back to the earth's surface and ways of the temperature of our planet. we have known that for at least a century. and we know that without this phenomenon we wouldn't be here. because without it, dear he could be too cold for human habitation. we also know that the earth's blanket of these gases is thickening because they've human generated at dignity, mostly burning fossil fuels. we know that the earth's temperature is rising because we can measure both.

we can measure the greenhouse blanket and we can measure the earth's temperature. and we have no plausible explanation for all of the rise in the earths temperature,, except for human generated activity. except for principally, although not exclusively the burning of fossil fuels. so we know this is happening. this is not a hoax. this is as close to an established fact that this kind of science can never come. now having said that, when you go further, there are lots of uncertainty. we don't know how far and how fast the earth's temperature will rise. we don't know what the effects will be. science talk about floods and droughts, storms, but the science we have is not able to predict with any precision whether such events will take place, where, when and at what magnitude. and therefore, we don't know

with any certainty just how much damage, just how much social and economic damage local warming will do. so there is lots of uncertainty surrounding the effects of global warming, although not really involved with its existing. at that insurgency is not a reason for complacency. it is not a reason to do nothing. industry because of these uncertainties the effects of global warming could be more benign than most scientists be.eve they willg but equally, that uncertainty means that the effects could be much more severe. it is conceivable, perhaps not the likeliest outcome, but certainly conceivable within the boundaries of possibilities that global warming if it goes unchecked could do catastrophic and irreparable damage to the

planet, which is the only habitable one we know about. as somebody put it in as we quote in that used to be us, we are running an uncontrolled experiment on the only home we have. so we need to start doing something about this problem. nds and said of any response that is serious to this problem is raising the price of fossil fuels. we won't get off fossil fuels immediately overnight or completely in the lifetime of anyone in this room. it is a difficult, complicated long-term problem, but elementary prudence to dates that we start now. and the way we start is by raising the price of fuel. and no one is advocating that. well, there's one more reason besides as i mentioned before that were doing so poorly in coping with her for a challenges

and thereby putting our future in jeopardy. our political system is broken. it is not working. it is functional. the reason we outline in the chapter devoted for american politics and that used to be us is the extreme polarization dividing our two major political parties. republicans and democrats aren't clinical terms further apart than they have been 100 years, possibly further apart than they have been since the 18th of decent we know what that led to. complicated andl1ñ=ñ= deeply rooted reasons for this that didn't happen overnight.$o/ the process took four decades to play out. it wasn't the work of one administration or one party or one individual and i won't be easy to fix, but it is an enormous problem for us because it means that the two parties

cannot cooperate to bring forth the measures that we need to cope with these large and growing challenges. it means that the political system is paralyzed while these challenges grow worse and that problem is aggravated by two of the things. the growing importance of money and the increasing power of special interest in american politics and the new media, which has many great advantages, rings many blessings to american democracy, but also has the effect in general of the increasing polarization. so we not only have these four great challenges, we have a serious political problem in trying to cope with them. well from here, there is both diabetes and good news. the bad news is that the paralysis of our political system is not the only reason that we are having such

difficulty meeting our major challenges. the good news is that there are, we believe, and say in "that used to be us" that we can do to put ourselves on the right track. and to conclude, tom will tell you about the. >> so is michael said, we are really stuck right now politically. and we also are stuck for another reason. we had a values decline in this country. a chapter in the book is called the evaluation. where are we now to the hearings that took place on capitol hill five years apart. the first was the five great baseball homerun hitters who sat by set to dice up at that witness table, at that congressional hearing on

steroids. to explain how at least some of them use steroids to hit grand slam home runs. five years later, not far away on that same capitol hill in another hearing room, five big wall street bankers that briefcase briefcase and explain how they used steroids called credit default swaps in order to hit grand slam home runs. ..yyóyyóyóyóyóyóyóyqqqqq

that believed in two things. one saves and invests, save and invest, and we are now actually eating through all of their savings and investing, and the other thing they believed him are what are our teacher and friend, doug, calls sustainable values, values that sustain. our generation, both michael and i are baby boomers, we, as kurt anderson said, flout mardy grow on christmas were so much fun we would every day of the week. we believed in bar and spend, we believe in some traditional values, do whatever the situation allows. it allows me to give you an

800,000 dhaka mortgage and you only have $10,000 of income and all they ask you this can you give something for i.t.? i do it if the situation allows it, just delete. as i said, our book is built around movies, and of course the great movie of our time about this issue is jerry maguire, show me the money. jerry maguire as doug points out all about the struggle between the guy that wants things sustainably and all his partners who want the situation. we have values decline and that's also very much part of this. so that really brings us to the concluding section of the book and i want to make two quick points one is what do we do about it.

what michael and i are given the chapter which is the phrase which is consciously what we thought we needed to deliver to the post soviet union to get their economy going in shock therapy we are now the ones who need shock therapy because right now for us to be able to solve our big problems and basically rebuild, revives and energize our formula for success we need to films. first we need to be able to act collectively. that's what we have lost in this and values decline. all the problems we face today that michael leave out all have collective solutions. you cannot solve these problems without collective action of the scale of world war ii or the cold war and that's why we believe our fundamental choice right now is we are either going to have a hard decade or a bad

venture. either we act collectively in the next decade and dig out of this whole or we are going to have a bad century. those are the choices coming into the politics we need is not only one that involves collective action is a politics that has an agenda because we need to as michael said we need to cut spending. we have made promises to your generation that we cannot possibly keep. second, we need to raise revenue because we cannot just shred social security and medicare. we are capitalists a capitalist system needs safety nets if it is going to thrive and survive because capitalism will allows capitalism to thrive and continue because people know the safety nets are under their will to live like a republican and

vote like a democrat has the interest we need to cut spending and raise revenue and we need to invest again in all five pillars of the education and infrastructure, immigration rules and government-funded research. we need to do all three at once. it happens at that hybrid agenda doesn't quite correspond, yet at least, to the agenda to our satisfaction of either party. neither party has quite got that hybrid and that brings up the shock therapy. what we believe is michael and i do not have a candidate, we don't have a party, we have an agenda and that agenda is taken up by president obama in the vigorous way that we think it needs to be taken up. we are obamaites. it's taken up by rick perry or

mitt romney we are all for whoever comes up with that agenda but if nobody comes up with that agenda, but we would argue, and hope for, is that someone will start an independent candidacy or third-party that will put that agenda before the public. because without that kind of shock therapy that proves that there actually is a radical center in this country that would support the agenda of 30 to 40%, without that, we are never going to get out of this. this is a pipe in the sky. we saw president teddy roosevelt do that, we saw george wallace to it with an agenda we didn't care for in 1968, and we saw ross perot do that in 1992. let's remember ross perot made bill clinton a deficit reducer. ask bob ruben. ross perot had 40% of the vote at one point. he wanted 20% come and he was

nuts lee. [laughter] at the end he thought little black helicopters were chasing him. but his agenda, his agenda linked up where the center of the country was and it had a huge effect and that's why the two things we would tell you about a third party if one were to emerge, one is that candidate, he or she, would not win, and the other is, we believe, if he or she had this agenda they would have a bigger impact on the country's future than the person that does. because the only way to break out of this paralysis is why changing the incentives. all these politicians today they are not stupid. they are clearly operating on a different set of incentives and we are. so i would say we are having an

economic crisis and the are having an election coming and the two barely overlap. so it's like they are in a parallel universe operating to different incentives as michael says set by special interests, money in politics. the only way to change that is to change the incentives. life is about incentives. move the cheese, move the mouse. don't move the cheese, the mouse doesn't move. we need to move the cheese to show the two parties that there is a huge chunk of cheese right in the center of the country, so instead of always correcting their eyes to words their extreme flanks, i mean, watch the republican debate. i mean, it's about one person trying to get to the right of another person, trying to get to the right of another person, and then somebody is brief enough to show the courage of literally medal of honor of winner to say

may be climate change exists. i shouldn't say that real loud, just sort of media i mean if you hold it up to the right -- i didn't say that but some people say climate change -- [laughter] that now goes for courage and the republican party. you know, some people believe in gravity, some people think the devil came down from the tree and some people think it came out of his head. [laughter] that's how crazy it's gotten. and unless you change the incentives and get people back to the center, nothing is going to change and that's why we make this argument in this chapter called quote coach jacques therapy." let me just say now you are entitled to ask -- you said when you began the two of you were optimist's but frustrated optimists, we now get the frustration. from whence comes your optimism and it comes from one of our

closing chapters, which is simply called "they just didn't get the word," because this country today is full of people still, got thank god, who just didn't get the word. they didn't get the word that we are depressed, that you're in a decline, and they just go out and invent stuff and start stuff and fix stuff and heels stuff and collaborate with people. the country is actually exploding still with energy from the bottom-up and in the chapter is stories of these people. if you ought to be an optimist about america stand on your head because the country looks better from the bottom-up them from the top down. and i really learned of this writing my previous book on energy where i went around the country talking about energy, giving talks to groups and was amazing the number of people who came up to me and said i have

this energy invention, i've got this dhaka that paddles a we'll come issues methane, turns the turban. i heard the craziest stuff. but it told me the country is alive with people who haven't got the word. opening the book to the university of new haven i get there and the president says we just started a medical school. in the middle of a recession, you didn't get the word? you know? [laughter] there's all kinds of people out there. just troubled country. i do these energy talks committee will give me their business cards. i go back to my hotel room after every talk and mdy pockets of business cards from in entrepreneurs and innovative. rock stars get room keys and i get business cards. [laughter] they are very excited in their own way, you know? [laughter] and what they tell you is that the country is a alive, it

really is, and the hyper connected world is great because they have down sides, but the upside is all i can start anything. i can start a multinational overnight for less money than ever before. not only your boss can do that, you can do it too. if it's not happening it's because you're not doing it. there is another excuse now. so what we say in the book is if we were to draw a picture of america today it would be a picture of the space shuttle taking off. all of this incredible frost coming from below that all the people out there who just didn't get the word. but in our case, the booster rocket, washington, d.c., is cracked and leaking energy and the cockpit is fighting over the plan. so right now we can achieve and is a philosophy. but he skipped philosophy we need to get into the next orbit. the next way that we deliver the

american dream but it's all here. that's when this forward-looking book has a backward looking title. it's all here. we had a formula for success. we have a formula for success. there's nothing we need to learn from china, although we wish china well and china can drive and we can't write. there's nothing we need to learn from brazil. we wish brazil well. they can thrive and we can thrive. our simple point and conclusion of this book is everything we need is right here in our past. the history books we need to read our hour own and the country we need to rediscover is america./ó that used to/ó be us, and it can be again. thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you. we do have time for a few questions. let me also say that books are available for purchase. >> did you say books are available, michael? [laughter] >> a gratified number of you have already available yourself of this valuable service. they will be available after the conclusion of the session, and they are already signed. so, we have a microphone. we have a gentleman that wishes to ask a question over here. a bunch of them over here. hard to reach, but we will count on that p.m. with the trouble.

>> thank you. [inaudible] i hope it goes well because it is a problem for us as well. [laughter] the second thing, i am going to ask about the incentive. third-party issue on the book -- can you open the issue of how you can change the incentives? i mean, what kind of things you are thinking about this. >> well it's a good question. it is spelled out in the chapter on shock therapy in "that used to be us." politicians offered according to incentives and what they are trying to learn is not money or a least not overtly. they are trying to earn votes coming and they will do what they need to do in order to get votes. now, the reason that if they believe as they do, the reason

the two parties are so polarized is that the political system has evolved in such a way that the core members of each party, the so-called base who control the nominations are much further apart than the country itself. so the parties don't really represent the country all that well and the people in the middle, because of the way that the system works, don't really get the kind of voice that they deserved or that they should have by virtue of their numbers. now how you change that. well, if there is a credible independent candidate who runs on the kind of platform that we have outlined in the book, and if that candidate does as well as theodore roosevelt did running as an independent in 1912 or george wallace in 1968 or ross perot in 1992, that will demonstrate to both parties that

there is a large block of voters up for grabs, and each of these two parties will have a powerful incentive to move to the center to what some of the issues of the centrist candidate in order to get that candidate's voters in the next election coming and the incentive will be powerful because of such a candidate runs on the platform that we suggest, those voters will be available either to republicans or democrats, and each party will have an incentive to try to capture those voters, lest the other dewitt and the party become minority. so if you have a substantial block in the middle, you draw both parties to the middle that has happened in the past and we believe it can happen again. that's how political incentives work. yes, sir, right here to this gimmick matthew, foreign service offer and member of the elected

board from the public sector union. briefing for the index of the book i looked for three things. i looked for labor, union and a new social contract or anything to that regard, and i couldn't find actually a single mention of any of those. and so my question to you in this internationally competitive world what does that new social contract look like? can we come today, afford things like the differential? can we afford things like my time differential? can we afford things like overtime pay for the labor? what does it look like? >> that's a very good question. i want to get this in my notes. all disalle when you are doing a book like this you don't get to touch every subject but i think my answer to you would be deceived by going to read somewhat from the book that's relevant. i think that we can afford all

of these things in a fury, provided you as a worker or as a collective delivering unique value creation, because if you're not, we can't afford it. not we, your boss can't afford it. so let me just read you the section from the book. it's an interview -- actually it's an insight from john rich who's the head of the technology companies and start-ups including red. and he also teaches m.b.a. courses. he wrote this on his blog and posted on a column. line in the business of killing jobs. i kill jobs in three ways: i killed jobs myself of, i kill jobs between competitors and by focusing on internal productivity. all of the company's live in the ceo of through service and software and eliminate jobs.

they even many jobs in the nation outsourcing in efficiencies in the process. the marketing is clear, less workers, more consistent dhaka. i reckon in the last decade but eliminated over 100,000 jobs in the worldwide economy. from the software and services my companies sell. so there, i sit, lie in the serial job killer. in each of the can be eliminated in the technology or cheaper labor is by definition not coming back. the worker can come back most often come back by being underemployed. others upgrade skills and return to previous levels of compensation, but as a cold the productivity gains the last 20 years have changed the landscape of what is a sustainable job. so what, then, is a sustainable? the best way i can articulate what is a sustainable job is to tell you as a job killer is a job i can't kill. i can't kill a creative people. there's no productivity solution were outsourcing i can sell to eliminate a creative person.

i can't kill unique value creators. a unique value creator is, well, unique. they might be someone with a relationship with a client someone with a great salesman, someone who has spent so much time mastering a market that they are subject matter experts. so my insight to you would be that -- i can give you what every answer colin yes, people deserve over time, they deserve everything, all these benefits, but i will tell you that in a hyper connected world, they will only be sustainable, whatever they get through labor action and collective bargaining, they will only be sustainable if those workers are unique value creators otherwise the company won't be there. >> next question. the leedy right here, then we will go to the back. >> my name is reagan, in the second year student strategic study and i work for the department of defense. i'm a big fan of the book.

i agree with all of your???? prescriptions. they are very well laid out, but in order to accomplish them, you know coming and reduce spending÷ the gigantic dod budget seems to be a good place to start, and? unfortunately in this time we d ot? of security threats abroad a and also have a great stake in securing our national interest abroad. so if you could recommend one or two areas of reform for the national security strategy and i will buy the book after which, thanks. [laughter] >> thank you. it's a good question.bbbb as it happens, i wrote a book,bb published a book about that verb last year called thebb superpower and i am glad to say this book agrees.bbb [laughter]bbbbbbbb to summarize the indolent pointb

êqz>> there are things we can and should and probably will cut and first and foremost all the post cold war interventions and which we have engaged beginning in somalia and bosnia and currently in iraq and

afghanistan. we are not going to see those again because we can't afford them. >> over here. >> a gentleman in the back. >> my name is chad and i am with the class of 2009 and i work with the department of defense. going to your point about the spending and sort of you mentioned green collar in your book. one of the things we're looking at in the department of defense is going green. one of your takes is based on the power of the purchase in the largest consumer of energy that if we challenge the market to produce results in about two or three years the argument is about putting money in the infrastructure to say to both to produce a result and we draw the

market. >> well, you know, there is a whole group green hawks in the pentagon and i think that there is nothing more valuable than rather than going down the solyndra ridge of commercializing technology we need to race to the top just as the pentagon says whoever comes up with a new generation -- and making this up -- that gives 50 miles to the gallon, we will buy them all. you have the market. whoever comes up with this level of efficiency in the solar panel we will buy them all and put them on every base in the country. shall we should be using our buying power when we are buying power, and we talk about it, we don't actually do it coming and if you actually set a really high standard and then just put out there and see what jumps for that, that's the way to do it rather than try to take this one or that one, you know, in any

state. we have a chapter called greeting al qaeda, because as you know, some of the military are the best way to prevent roadside bombs is not to be on the road, and almost all -- a huge number of roadside bombs were in the convoy is trucking fuel from one place to another. my favorite quote from that book is a guy that says when we leave iraq it will be the biggest transfer of air conditioners ever known to mankind. and so, the army is a great place to start. the secretary of navy, ray mavis, has done a lot of work on this. they flew an f-18 hornet i think last year and broke the sound barrier, and so i think there's a lot of potential. but we haven't pushed it as aggressively as we should.

you know, there is -- it needs a price signal coming and we are trying to do it the easy way by the government boesh. but without the consumer poll it is sustainable and the fixed consumer poll only comes from the signal when gasoline was nearly $5 a gallon, you couldn't buy a toy iota hybrid petraeus in bethesda. they stopped taking names and the gasoline is $2 a gallon you cannot sell a toyota hybrid petraeus at coleman toyoda, so price matters and without a price signal you don't have the fixed durable consumer poll, there for every investment is a risk investment and depends on some government program and some loop and you don't get where you need to go. >> we have time for a couple of more questions. right here.

this young lady right here. >> thank you so much.?? i am an intern and the center÷ does a lot of stories on the issues of climate change, and i think -- i really do agree we need to move away from the fossil fuel, but the problem with that is a lot to elaborate more what your theory is when you raise the price of the fossil fuel one might raise the price of everything else in the world and what and people just get used to it the first chapter is people just get used to whatever happens. it's not the expectation but they are just like the elevator is broken. >> that's a good question. >> basically i will to cut real quickly. imagine that i invented the

world's first cellphone, and i can to jessica and i said jessica i have a phony you can carry in your pocket. she would say a phone i can carry in my pocket i feel like i can call alums and i've got 24/7, 365, trade you. [laughter] i have a phone you can carry in your pocket what would you say? she would say i will take ten. wait a minute, this thing called a cell phone costs of thousand dollars each. she would say no problem, tom. a phone i can carry in my pocket would change my life, it would give me a new set of functions that i have never had before. so her one, him one, you, one, you know what happens. six months back