are on. you are not a team player. you are too close to them in south africa. you are certainly too close to the black folks in this country so you have no idea whose side you are on and so turn over all of your materials to this guy in charge of the private sector because he will take it from here. >> mechanism whereby we could intercede in another country in a national agreement? we had an agreement on the commission and the national agreement that came out of the commission signed by both the united states and south africa and the morgan partly a lot of our work is not just simply a part of an international agreement is also a lot of behind-the-scenes work. i could have very easily called the corporation and set with i would like to have an off the record conversation with you. you know, we are working on this

project and before this becomes a major legal battle could we somehow come together and talk about things? a lot of my work consisted of those kind of informal approaches as well. so it doesn't always -- our work doesn't always have to rise to a major international agreement. there's a lot of work behind the scenes as well. thank you very much. [applause] >> for more inflation, visit the author web site, marsahcoleman-adebayo.com. up next booktv interviewed former president bill clinton about his recent book back to work why we need smart government for a strong economy.

>> president bill clinton coming in your new book back to work you talk about the fact the u.s. should get back in the future business; what do you mean by that? >> i mean that we should have a strategy to build a future of shared prosperity and shared responsibility is based on a cooperative relationship between a strong private economy and a smart government. i think this battle we have been in over whether the government is the source of all our problems and there is no such thing as a bad tax cut or good tax or bad deregulation our good deregulation as obscure what is really going on out there in the world is we still have a lot of the enormous advantages in america but we have lost ground relative to a lot of other countries and the percentage of our young adults with college degrees and our performance and

standardized tests in the competitiveness of our health care system where we get what we pay and our ability to generate manager during inclement and ability to export in our research and development capabilities in the areas that we know are growing in the years ahead and i think it is because we have been asking the wrong questions. we need to talk about how can we build an economy of broadly shared prosperity. what does the government have to do, what is the private sector have to do and how can they work together. >> what happened in 1990 used a lot of time in your book talking about or ms orie, 1980 in the last 30-years-old was the fundamental change the was made? >> president carter had had a very successful first two years in office. a lot of people forget that you look at the midterm elections his party did quite well and we had about 10 million jobs. we would like to have that 10 million back now. but at the end of his term we

had this stagflation. high inflation and stagnant growth problems with managing our foreign oil prices, the iranian hostage crisis, trust in government was slow and president ronald reagan was elected and he said let me cut all the taxes i will cut off the life support of government and shrink government. but it turned out neither the white house or both parties in congress really wanted to shrink government so we began to wear to run structural deficits for the first time in history and was the beginning along with some developments in the private sector of a slow erosion of our competitive positions. if we were going to have to times any way because other countries would work as hard as we do we would start so we would have to be on our game to maintain america's position any way, but by taking our eye off the ball which is doing what works in a modern highly

interdependent world and having the same argument we had in 2010 all over again the government is the source of all the problems i think has caused a lot of trouble so i try to do is talk about why the strategy didn't work and why what we did in the nineties worked better and why it will work again, and why ie essentially have supported the positions president obama has taken on interviewing an effort delete a number of other areas because it is taking us in the direction we should be doing. >> when we talk about solutions, your solutions to how we can get to the economy back, you talk quite a bit about the some symbols commission and some of their recommendations. if you had been president and that commission had come out with its report, what would you have done with it? >> i believe what i would have done is said it is a great piece of work and i think that in general it is going in the right direction. i think we should use it as a

blueprint and work off of that. i don't agree with everything in the report for example i say in the book that while i agree that we are taxing at 55% with corporations and texas and we are the only major country still taxing overseas income which is keeping that money from coming back here by our tax take is only 23%, so i would like to see the broadening of the tax base and get as close to 23% which is what we are taxing at any way as possible, but i would leave the r&d tax. in other words, if we use it as a framework, we can always change it. they had a proposal on social security that was quite progress of the actually gave more money to the lower income seniors which is really important because as you saw from the report that came out today on the poverty statistics it is actually going up among the lower income seniors because

notwithstanding medicare they still had a significant out-of-pocket health care costs. so i like the social security drift of the social security bubble. on the other hand if the economy were to produce more growth than the estimate i think we should try to balance the budget sooner rather than would bring it back into balance by 2035. on that score they are pretty conservative. but they do know that we have to swallow their retirement to the baby boomers and they have to a cylinder estimate that we cannot bring health care costs back in line with inflation to the i think we can, which it's hard to assume if you are running the commission like that. >> one of your 46 recommendations repatriating the tax profits from overseas when we talk to policy makers everyone seems to support that. why has that not become policy?

>> for two reasons. reason number one is in 2004 president bush tried to do -- let me back up and sable law in america is if you are an american corporation your money overseas if you bring it back to america to reinvest whether it is in the new plant equipment, new employees or pay raises what ever you bring it back for you over the american tax minus whatever you paid overseas. now every of their major country has gone territorial which means they let people bring their money back without the tax. as a result a lot of the money gets parked overseas. and eventually we will invest it overseas but in fairness in 2004 when president bush tried this in congress and taxed a very modest 5.4%, the company's that

repatriated not only didn't create any jobs in america and put all the money into the executive compensation, the eliminated about 40,000 jobs. my answer to that is this. when we work on this i think the president should ask the republicans to work on the corporate tax reform and the democrats. i think the goal should be to get the quote as close as possible which is 23% which would mean you would have fewer people paying less than 20 which i think is not acceptable that is about the average american pays. while doing that, i would let them repatriated in the following way, to avoid the problem we had in 2004. i would make the same deal on that the president's made on the payroll tax. i would say if you can document that you have added to that employment, then the portion that you spend doing that is not

subject to any tax, bring it back right now. if you want to do whatever you want to with the money than you have to pay the long-term capital 15%, not 5.4 and will take that money and fund america's share of the infrastructure bank and then open it up to americans to invest by buying bonds to build america and open up to the foreign investors and opened up to the sovereign will from other countries and let america joined the ranks of other wealthy countries that are using private as well as public funds to modernize their infrastructure so that's one problem. the other problem is that the joint tax committee is inclined to say they said in 2004. you can do it now but you were losing $80 billion over the long run. they shouldn't say that anymore. now that every other country changed their system we are not getting the 80 million we might as well get the money back now and invest it and put america back to work. espinel also in your look back to work president clinton you

talk about executive compensation and executive compensation levels. do you think it needs to be regulated? >> no i don't because i tried to take a back at it by passing ballan back in '93 with the economic plan to limit the tax deductibility to let executive compensation terrie i believe we limited to the million dollars a year. you pay people whatever you want but deduct them $1 million a year. inadvertently i might have contributed to another trend which has been destabilizing i think which is paving the executives that they can defer cash again until it rises in value, and the problem with that is reinforces the trend of saying the stockholders are important sticklers and corporations than the employees

and the customers and the communities and from the 1930's when most of our corporate law was really made up through the 70's knew the late 70's, corporations were thought to be creatures in the state that got certain limited liability in return for which they have obligations to the shareholders, the employees, customers and communities. then starting in the late 70's and going through the last 30 years, we have created this environment which the shareholders and we more than the employees or the customers of the communities and the irony of that is that the people with the biggest stake in the long-term profitability of the company have the least influence. the people with the biggest stake in the short term of the companies have the lowest influence. so i think the government policy should try to rebalanced that. if that happened, then i think he would have more corporations

run like nucor come and talk about that in their whether it is trying to take care of the employees, too. >> president clinton coming you looked at in your book as well when you're talking about the commission you also talk about that and how perhaps we should be moving in that direction. >> i think over the long run the virtues are as follows. number one -- excuse me. you constructor it to be progressive so it doesn't fall on the necessities of life and on the lower income people. member to come it is good for exports because the last level of the vat tax which is basically a tax on various steps in the production chain, the last level doesn't fall on a product to do so in another country. and the last level does all one projects that are sold from other countries here. it's one thing you can do to

help your export that does not violate any international trade law. second, the that prefers investment over consumption so it is more towards the future than the present and that is something we have to do in america. so i think that that is something that i think will have to move toward what it is impossible to do now with middle american incomes declining against inflation and the cost of living and with this specter hanging over the future and with the urgent need to create jobs now. but i do believe that if we can succeed in the corporate tax reform we should take a look at the individual tax reform as a sense of the commission recommends and then we should take a look at whether some or all of those taxes could be supplemented or replaced. >> do you think that the congressional deficit-reduction or super committee showed look

at fundamental reform of the tax system? and what do you think of the deficit reduction committee structuring and general? >> will life and that the structure is the only practical one with any chance of coming out with a program that will provide cover for the democrats to vote for the things they don't like and republicans to vote for the things they don't like. they seem determined so far to do with the president recommended and what was reflected in the first budget deal made last december which is not to have a lot of budget cuts or tax increases while this economy is so weak. even the president's little surcharge on the people in my income group to pay for some of the things that we need to do would not trigger until 2013. so i haven't given up on that. it's tough because if you want to get to a million and a half dollars in the deficit

reduction, 1.5 trillion, excuse me, it's hard to get there without any revenue at all unless you can bring the health care costs more closely in line with inflation. and the best thing to do that as i point out in this book or changing the delivery system of health care and those are hard to score. president ronald reagan found a bill he worked with the democratic congress on and i signed a bill i worked with the republican congress on to save money in the medicare and medicaid. the bill president reagan signed saves 15% than was estimated at 50% more to build on that and we saved 50% for the first year. i don't claim full credit for that. we work together democrats and republicans. we are trying to figure out what will work, but the point is i am convinced that there are tons of things that can be done that with and erode the quality of health care or leave people feeling their health care has been cut and bring the inflation rate down.

but it's hard to get the congressional committee to, quote, scored it because you can't know in advance exactly how much money is involved. >> this is president bill clinton's fourth look back to work why we need smart governments for a strong economy. mr. president, in this book you have referred quite often to andrew holstein's new book the next american economy to the estimate it's a good book. and americans who are pessimistic should read it because you will get you out of your pessimism. it's good in two ways. first it shows that there are places in america that or roaring into the future with confidence. and second, it describes what they do so that you can imagine wherever you live adopting a version of that and putting it in where you live. now, not everybody can be silicon valley. not everybody can be the tech cluster around mit. not a reality can have 100

circulation companies the way that orlando does. i was their last night talking about it. not everybody can be the center of the genomics research believe that san diego is. but everybody can do something. when we had the global initiative meeting to the united states, last summer a company called on shore said they would create a thousand jobs and jobs to the courage of the misery that had been devastated by the tornado by providing services that previously used to be outsourced to other countries in a small community and more rural setting and if they were going to be told those and more jobs in the next few years. those are the kind things we need to look at. when people read the whole book they will, you know, held bricker pessimism. >> if you're the president and had the opportunity to be the encourage your in and chief how would you make a that the ipad

is manufactured in the united states? what policies would you set? >> first of all i don't know that we can because apple has invested a lot of money in their infrastructure. but in general what i think we ought to do is look up the overall wage structure in which is rising at a time and then you have to add to that of the chinese products are going to be made and sold in america you have to look at the freight costs, and you took the productivity of the workforce, not just just wages come to have to look where the materials come from. and i would be analyzing all of the high and manufacturing being done in the world today, not just on the ipad, and figure out which of those things can be made in america if we have a good generous research and development tax credit if they could have the lab is on the site with manufacturing.

and then i would organize instead of the tax incentives to do that for example of the chinese on the solar and wind jobs so that they just another $4 billion of incentives in, free training, free land, a 20 year tax holiday they are determined to hold on to this as key to the 21st century manufacturing. we don't have to do that much because we have great venture capital because we've got a lot of laboratories behind this work because our capacity for solar and wind generation is staggering. we've ranked first or second in the world in the ability to do this. north dakota alone can generate enough electricity for 25% of our use in america. from the wind if we had a national grid and you could feed the power where the people are where the wind blows or the sun shines. so that's what i would do. i would design a program around the kind of good jobs that we

have the best chance to get. >> stevan more in his review of your book today in "the wall street journal" lamented what he said was you going from being a new democrat to a back to big government person and this book is all about the big government coming back with a roar. what is your response to that? >> that's not true. i mean, you know, when i was president as i pointed out, we spent less than 20% of gdp. we spent about less than 19% of gdp, and we taxed less than 20% of gdp. both at or under our post-world war two average. when i was the governor, we had the second lowest tax burden in the country. i raise taxes to fund education and economic development incentives and lowered the taxes to provide tax incentives to create jobs and to reduce the

income tax burden. i got rid of the income tax on 25% of people. so that isn't true. but i do what i want to do where we would disagree is he would like to keep on cutting the government and the to be wonderful. i call for a public-private partnership in the infrastructure. it's nothing america has never done. i have no objection to privatizing certain things. but on the other hand, if you look at the facts it isn't public versus private it is what works best. for example, we have a privatized health care system that in 2009 in the death of the recession raised health insurance premiums so much under the guides that costs were going up that health insurance profits went up 50% and 5 million people lost their health insurance, 3.5 million of them went on medicaid because they had no place else to go. on the government program so the

policies that he would support our increasing government as maintenance and so i believe that -- i just don't think is a public printing and we have to have a cooperative attitude. a lot of things the private sector as we devotee of the government will ever do. for example, i prefer tax credits to the government subsidies taking the particular the 1603 program which it took about a lot in there because it gives the equivalent of a tax credit to start-ups so that we encourage start-ups as well as existing businesses. sali know what he would like to see is continue to shrink the federal government will less indiscriminately. i have no objection. when i was president we had the smallest federal government since dwight eisenhower's last

year, smallest percentage of the federal work force since franklin roosevelt was president. i wouldn't mind doing that again. but there are some things the government has to do. the government is good at aggregating capital for the infrastructure but i think we need more private investment so i would like to see a debate and the committee could do this, you asked what the committee, they could say look chairs with the government has to do the to the national security. the have to help people with the fault of their own can't support themselves. we have made a decision in their retirement years people should have a decent standard of living. we have a whole wealth of things that support economic development and if anything we have to do more because our competitors are. same thing with the scientific research, same thing with the technological expansion of access come same thing with education. what we need to do is to identify those things which the government shouldn't do and do

them well let no greater cost than is absolutely necessary and then the things the private sector should do and figure out how we can have a closer partnership tariffs gannet you are well known for your era of big government address to congress. you have 46 policy recommendations in this book. is this book consistent with that? >> i never said that year the was over. what land as i thought the era in which big government bureaucracies would deliver services on an industrial model was over. keep in mind when i was the president of the social security administration won a national award for the customer service. we began to let people file their tax returns electronically i tried to simplify the government and make it less bureaucratic. we got over 16,000 pages of government regulations on the

people. i think that we should continue to try to modernize and streamline the government. but if there is something we need the government to do because we have a generally shared interest the market won't fix like clean air, clean water, food, because we have to do it to be competitive. new manufacturing jobs in high-tech areas. then we ought to do it and do it well. >> finally mr. president could you have written this book while in office? >> it deals with a lot of the things i've been concerned about since i started running for president including the pneumatics of the income inequality and the shrinking of the middle class prospects which i was concerned about, but i know more about it now and we have more historical evidence. we have the 12 years before i was president, eight years after and then the effort to struggle

out of the financial crisis with president obama before he got the new congress. so i couldn't have written this exact book with this book is consistent with my philosophy. >> we are here the new york historical society with bill clinton talking about his book back to work. there's an even tonight with chelsea clinton. >> i hope i can remember what's in it. one of the great signs of success in life is when your children know more than you do. i am sure that will be on display tonight. >> thank you. we will be covering of the event with chelsea clinton. coming up next book tv present "after words" an hour or one program where we invite

guest hosts interview authors. this week george nash present freedom and betrayed. in it, president hoover provides comprehensive analysis of world war ii and the cold war sharply disagreed with many of the successor's traces. biographer george nash and edited manuscript published 50 years after completion and discusses his findings with richard norton smith, former director of the hoover presidential library. >> host: george nash we are all customers to former presidents writing books more than others. what is unusual about herbert hoover the writer and the magnum-opus in particular? >> it may be true the herbert hoover wrote more than any other president. he wrote more than 30. tiahrt might be a competitor. i haven't got an exact count. jimmy carter has done quite a

number as well. those would be to people in the same general vicinity perhaps and nixon with his many foreign policy books in his years after the presidency. hoover was a devoted writer and i think the intellectual and whoever is on display in the book that has just been published freedom betrayed. your question is what is unusual. let me frame it a bit. this was initially an installment of hoover's multi volume memoir that he has began to write an earnest in 1940 and he actually published three volumes in his lifetimes but volume for come five and six were never published in quite the form that he had envisioned. this volume freedom betrayed was what he called his more book to be his account, his memoir of his own view of world war ii and its afteth