>> so this is some basic findings from my research. these also are entirely based on u.s. government statistics. if you spend $1 million on investments in a green economy, and by that again i mean investing in energy efficiency like efficiency in buildings, efficiency in industry, public

transportation, improving the electrical grid system so it is able to operate with solar and wind power and so forth. investments in energy efficiency. and renewable energy. so building a solar power, wind power, geothermal power, to some extent hydroelectric, small-scale. you're going to create 17 jobs for every $1 million you spend. i contrast, if we spend the same $1 million on maintaining the fossil fuels economy and nuclear power, you create five jobs. so at 17 jobs versus five jobs for the same amount of money spent. so you get roughly three times more jobs per dollar of expenditure every time you shift $1 million out of the fossil fuel economy and into the green economy. the green economy is good for jobs. so it is a short-term program

investing in it and creating jobs immediately. it's a long-term program because it's the only way that we can get to some level of ecological sanity to maintain and build a green economy and fight climate change. so another statistic along these lines, on this notion that you need military spending, spending on the military in terms of jobs creates about 11 jobs per 1 dollar of expenditure where as i said the green economy is 17. education actually is 27 jobs per $1 million of expenditure. so when they talk about that's, and you know -- talk about cuts, and you know what this deal, fiscal cliff sequester do, it's supposed to be half that of social spending in half of the military. but as we speak what they are

really talking about our ways to not cut the military and to load all the cuts on the social spending. education will create relative to military again two and a half times more jobs. so when we talk about the job effect, we should say if there must be cuts, yes, take him out of military. take them out of fossil fuels. put them in the green economy. put them in the education. that's how we invest in the long-term future. that's really women talk about security, -- that's really when we talk about safety. that means we have to educate young people. that should be a strategy. so the long-term strategy of building up a green economy, creating opportunities and education is also the strategy, the best strategy for green jobs and moving the economy to full employment. so back to full employment, there's a short-term way to get there. this is pretty straightforward

in technical terms. there is a long-term plan for sustaining a full employment economy. what we really need to do is get the politics mobilized to fight for it, and that means not justified against the republicans, but we have to get the democrats and we have to what we really need to do is build up at the ground level, at the grassroots, and whoever the politicians are, to start to embed a game in our society centrality of full employment as a fundamental feature of how we function. so i will stop there and we can have a session. [applause] [inaudible] >> i know 30, 40 years ago, clinton came in. what would you consider the full

employment -- >> very good question. because the ideas and we can't keep fighting for full employment because once we do we get uncontrollable inflation. the reasoning behind that is that when the unemployment rate goes down a lot, that workers get more bargaining power. and when workers get more bargaining power they will bargain up their wage government and businesses will pass on those extra costs to consumers, and that's how you get inflation. really there's not a lot of evidence that that works. it's one of these things that works a few years and doesn't work for a few years. for example, in the late 1990s we had very low unemployment and we had almost no inflation. in the 1960s, we did have some trade off. in the 1970s, we had very high

unemployment and a very high inflation. in that period, the '70s is when this whole idea kind of took grip that the government can't worry about unemployment. it has to rebut inflation. but the source of inflation in the 1970s was the oil price. oil prices tripled in 1973 and again in 1979. so that was the source of inflation. it was not workers having more bargaining power. i think workers should have more bargaining power. i just said we've gone 40 years without, on average, i'm not saying every single worker, essentially 40 years was about the average worker without getting out raise. historically unprecedented. this is before the crisis in 2008. this is a fundamental transformation of society that workers don't get the benefit, their own improvement in

productivity. what's the number? what do i call full employment? it doesn't have to be zero unemployment because there's always going to be people between jobs. that we call frictional unemployment. somewhere in the range i think of 3.5% unemployment, truly 3.5%, not just the narrow number but true 3.5, somewhere in the range of 3.5% and at what else is going to be between jobs. and the reason i say that is what we've seen, we were below 4% unemployment in 1998, briefly. end of the 1960s we went for years at around 3.5%. and what happened? workers did get raises. in 1997-98, races, the own time

that you can see the picture in the book, over this 30 year period, all the sudden workers to get raises, especially workers in the lower 20% of the labor market got the fastest raises. so that's good. i see that as a good year now, will it cause inflation? it might cause a little but that's also good. that's not a problem. if the inflation rate goes up by, three, 4% and we are operating a full implement the economy, that's a positive. if inflation is caused by speculation in oil markets, which we now have also as a severe problem, that's bad. so we have to understand the source of inflation but that's really my idea of where practical full employment level should be. speak at the clinton years, more

money but got more sleep to get more money. one reason why inflation, low unemployment and also low inflation. >> the raises in the '90s, again just looking at this little picture here, the raises in the '90s were very brief. this low unemployment rate was very brief. you can ask what happened? it was the result of the previous initial bubble, the so-called dot com bubble where there was a lot of investment in the economy, a lot of borrowing, a lot of investment in the economy became turbocharged for a couple of years. what i'm trying to get at is thinking of ways that we can get to that level of activity that will create a lot of jobs without relying on the financial speculative bubble. that's were i think investments

in building a green economy can be very important. [inaudible] >> that's right. that's exactly it. >> in addition to all you laid out, do we also need to shorten the work week? >> yes. overtime i think that's a desirable policy, but right now i know that's a suggestion, and i know in germany that's a big part of the way in which the unemployment rate has not been as severe as here. but i think if we put a lot of stress on that particular thing, then that is going to be taken to be, okay, we don't have the capacity to create jobs. here's the number of jobs, let's just chop up the hours more and people are going to have less time, and they will make less. so right now i don't see that as

a really good solution. >> i'm wondering if you could talk in specifics about policies around the free economy. what will be asking the government, isn't most of the government or private -- >> i think it is both. a big part of my thinking on the green economy is about efficiency. it's not just about solar power, wind power. for example, buildings, buildings are the biggest source of energy consumption in the society. and our buildings operate at very low levels of efficiency. and the technologies to raise efficiency is not fancy. retrofitted buildings as things that could be done with on the shelf, you know, technologies we don't have to think about like with solar, a lot of progress.

my favorite in terms of building efficiency, all the technology is there. the average investment in a retrofit pays for itself in three years because you get, you reduce your energy bill. in a way you don't really need the government, you don't need the government to subsidize that. you just need to organize the financing so that people don't have to put up all the money and put up all the risk and a return comes back. so that's one big part. of the overall picture. banks could do that, yes. look, the other thing is we should be retrofitting each and every government building. public building, that's good for the taxpayer. there's a lot in the book the past in 2007, mark the year, because george bush was

president and he signed the bill. and it said that, if i can get it exact, 75% of all the public buildings are mandated to be retrofitted by 2015, to achieve i think it's 35%, efficiency standards. it's the law. i don't know enough about washington to know if you pass a law, don't you have to do something? so it's not happen. it is a law. so that would be very important, again, and it would be a benefit, aside from the environmental benefit it would be a benefit to taxpayers because we would be paying 30% less for energy for all the government buildings. and it would set off the market. it would spill into the private market. people would think about more. in terms of renewables, another thing people don't know, this began, government statistics, energy department. the u.s. energy department says

that by 2017, wind power to generate a kilowatt of wind power is going to be at parity with coal and it will be cheaper than nuclear power. this is not me. this is the energy department. solar is more expensive, but solar has also been coming down very dramatically. so if not by twice 17, because when people think it will be, but within a decade solar power will be at parity. the only source of energy at which renewables will not be a cost parity is fracking of natural gas. so this is this technology, fracking, that yes, it does pull out natural gas from shale rock very cheaply, but it is an environmental disaster. so if we're looking at a cheap energy future, we can do just fine with investments in

efficiency and renewable if you put aside the fracking. so eventually i think going to be a big struggle in the future, and i know that the obama administration is saying they are for investing in the green economy, but the phrase is we are for all of the above, including especially cheap natural gas through fracking, and that we have to oppose that. there's no way, i've got another book, maybe you let me come back on this, let me just summarize the result. there is no way you come close to meeting the -- to meeting the emission reduction target if we do anything like maintaining our existing level of consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas. know what you come close. so if you take the climate

scientists at all seriously, which i do, basically they had to cut consumption of all three, coal, oil and natural gas, by 50%, roughly 50, 40% within 20 years. so how can we build up this whole big fracking industry? forget about the other environment, the fact is contaminating water and it's creating latinos. let's just -- volcanoes. just on the climate effect come you just can't do it. so, therefore, the green economy is an environmental imperative and it also happens it's good for jobs. >> i have to agree with you on energy savings. i work for a nonprofit that builds affordable housing and there's tremendous gains that could be made by going in and retrofitting buildings,

insulating them, tends to be able to employ people at a semiskilled level, and people in the city centers, but you may find it, it does need some subsidy i think. >> you have to get it started. it's very frustrating. fred and i are in this profession, as economists, somebody 200 years ago thought this was dismal science because all the nay saying, saying nothing that is going to come. so the engineering evidence on the benefits of energy efficiency are massive. again, i had this book coming out, one of the things i did for this other book was a lot of what i just read is studied by the national academy of sciences, called real prospects for energy efficiency. again, this is not economists

talking. this is the national academy of sciences just calling together all the best engineering research. and basically what i told you about the benefits and efficiencies are all in this national academy of sciences. on the other hand, you have the economies. here's the orthodox economists saying no, no. that's in getting. engineers don't know how economics really works, and the main argument from the orthodox economist is that people don't want to do this. there is risk, yet, there is risk. there is hassell. it's time to each other commercial building, you've got to let these people in, they've got to do the thing. who knows, they could be thieves. therefore, there's an article in one of the leading academic journals and economics that is saying, there's no benefit to energy. forget what all the engineering evidence, when you take account of these other things, there's no benefits.

my response is if there are such big engineering evidence, scientific evidence is there, but our job is to think of ways to overcome whatever problems there are in terms of financing come in terms of hassell, in terms of building up the market. that seems to me to be the right economic answer. so things like what you were doing in your community. as that spreads people accept the idea, yes, we should retrofit our building, just like what will be happening is cars are going to be getting twice as efficient over the next 15 years. they will be a little more expensive and people will get used to it. then they will see yeah, you're going to pay $3000 more, but then you're going to get $1200 a year in savings, so it's going to pay for itself in two and a half years. >> in earlier think about the

difference between the productivity gains and the wage level, how are we selling the output? where is it going? if you're not, you know, the upper class can't be consuming half of these economic output, and so does that mean that we are condemned to death to clear all this? >> household debt, up until the 2008 crisis, basically doubled as a share of household income from 1980s, it was about 50% household income. by 2008 it's over 100%. the people were living beyond their means. part of the way they did that was we had a housing bubble, so house prices were going up so that man meant people were more wealthy on paper. they borrowed second mortgages, and that enabled him to sustain

a living standard that was in excess of their income. another way of course the people took more than one chip exxon talking about the average wage for one job, so you double up, you have to jobs, even if their low-paying jobs. so that was also started to become customary. and any other part of it is yeah, the level of consumption. of course, the wealthy -- there's only so much they can buy, but consumption by the rich, yeah, became much more of a focus. the rich became, being rich didn't just mean you had a nicer house and a nicer car but it meant you had two houses, mention at a private plane, and all of those things actually do add up. >> how much should the government subsidize companies? i'm thingy of a solar company,

like solyndra spent i'm glad you asked me about solyndra. there's this big myth. i was in this e-mail exchange with somebody who is a very, very good journalist. you probably have some of her books. i won't mention her name, but she just wrote me about this yesterday, and i said i can't believe you bought this stuff. so fred mentioned that i was consulting with the energy department. i've canceled on the project to which solyndra got its subsidy. so here's the story. the program was to give a loan guarantees to big companies that were investing in renewable energy. so there were 24 companies that got -- they didn't get loans from the government. they got loan guarantees, meaning that they got private loans that they had to pay back only if they failed to pay back,

then the government was on the hook, okay? so there are 24 companies, three of them have defaulted. solyndra being the biggest. so the total amount of loan guarantee was $15 billion. the three companies, add up to three copies, that the government was on the hook for out of 15 billion was 600 million. so about 6%. on top of that when these companies defaulted, solyndra, you know, they do have assets. and the government takes all the assets and then they can sell them off. they have buildings, they have machines, they have land. so basically the government was on the hook for $300 million. so let's say is the $300 million program that led to $16 billion in new investments in the green

economy. this is a successful program. when i was doing, thinking i was doing with the energy department was they showed me this long list of a specific project under the stimulus and they said if we spend this amount of money, how many jobs are going to get out of spending this about money? and not surprisingly, the best way to spend the money was through these loan guarantees because most of the time the loans don't default. basically the government spent $300 million got $16 billion worth of new jobs. this is a really good program. that's exactly why you want a loan guarantee because there some risk. but even with some risk, 90% of the time the program succeeded. [inaudible]

>> i will say this. it was a new program. there's more commitment. on the screen investment program and actually has ever been done in u.s. history, and then i was sitting there talking these people doing it. and part of the problem was, it hadn't been done before. so of course there will be mistakes. of course, it's difficult to scale up. under bush it was like a billion. so the endless with $90 billion, you go from 1,000,000,090,000,000,000. there's going to be natural going to be startup discipline. for the most part the programs were succeeding. including this one. so it's gotten terrible press. i tell this story in his new book that you may ask -- now,

the trouble, i hope this book is readable. the other one is not. i've got to rewrite it to make it readable. i tell the story and i'm dying to put out but got to wait. my publisher wouldn't like it very much if i started giving all the details before the book comes out. solyndra was a successful -- celinda itself fail. the program under which solyndra got its loan guarantee has been a success. >> some companies might be willing to have investment in the absence of support from the government's. >> that's true to the mix of a total 15 billion, should that be scaled back? what more could of intent is more money was on the table for companies to invest? >> i don't know, that's a very good question. that is one of the criticisms as

well. asked me the loan with a loan guarantee. maybe they would make a loan without a loan guarantee. you do have to try to judge that, but for the most part i think this is a good way for the government to leverage its financial capacity. it's a lot less expensive than directly spending. i should mention in terms of renewable energy, the biggest level of activity in the u.s. economy today, or maybe in the world today in terms of renewable energy, i have to say is the u.s. military. the u.s. military has committed, and i think they are serious, to having lied 2025, 25% of all their energy coming from renewable sources. and they're doing some fairly innovative things. and it's not all government spending. but they are doing is also say

try this firm, you build up a solo, you build up the wind and then we will buy it from you and will have a long-term contract and we will buy from you. and that is going i think to become very significant. if we look at where innovation is taking place, technological innovation in this country since its founding, a lot of it has been tied, for better or for worse, the military. one example that i will mention that is quite pertinent for the moment is the internet. the internet came in time out of the u.s. military investment. it was subsidize in a major way for 35 years. so when bill gates says a, the internet came from private initiative, that's just false. the technology was developed by the u.s. government, subsidized

massively by u.s. taxpayers, and then handed over to the private sector. and that's something like that obviously doesn't have to have the u.s. military, but something like that should be happening, and so the solyndra case and the program is a small example, a very positive program. once solar power and wind power are at cost parity, then they won't need subsidies anymore. again, we need to build out the market, people have to get used to it. we hear a lot about solar power. do you know how the proportion of overall energy in this country is supplied by solar power? take a guess. >> 2%? >> how about one quarter of 1%? its many school. so essentially to say we will

build out a renewable economy, we start almost as you. all the good ideas and discussions, its many school, miniscule, miniscule. win vessel bigger. the biggest source is corn ethanol. that is no improvement environmentally relative. >> may i ask which government agencies, which government, is at the department of energy -- >> that's kind of a mess. the department of energy did this one that all for renewable energy projects. >> the european countries, some of them like denmark and germany are so far ahead. what was their policy that helped -- it's government policy, right? >> absolutely. germany is saying, they're going 100% off of nuclear and they

want, i think, what's the number? they want to be at something like, don't quote me, something like 25 or 30% renewable. number one, they are way more efficient. so right now, and roughly the same living standards that we have today. they consume half as much energy per person. half. so that's what i say, when i say we've got to build up and invest in efficiency, all i'm saying is in 20 years get to where they are in europe today. that's really all i am saying and that will be a big challenge to any other thing they did is that they have these projects like what would talk about what the military in which the utilities were forced to buy the renewable power at a fixed long-term price. so investors, including a lot of

cooperatives. it wasn't just big business. most of it was smaller cooperatives, community development that putting wind turbines, even in cities. they invested in these things and people who invested knew that it wasn't a risk because they had a fixed price and then you who their market was. that i did actually started in california with -- [inaudible] >> no, the government forced, basically the consumer subsidize that. the government said this is what you, the utility company, you have to do, you have to buy this power. but what we're saying is wind power is close to cost parity so there's no subsidy. it's just building up the market. >> can you say something about

why the divergence between productivity and wages over the past 40 years? >> fred can talk about that. this is to me a classic picture of what i understand to be marxian economics, that the basic idea in marks is that workers don't have the bargaining power, and the business owners, capitalists get a higher share of overall profit. and the more they have bargaining power, the bigger picture the kid. so what's happened over the last 35 years that this divergence could occur? by the way, this is not something that was expected or even widely understood. for example, probably the most prominent economist any strife in will, and even the most prominent liberal economist is paul krugman has his column in the times.

krugman wrote an article in the 1990s, and he said i can think of no example in human history in which, when productivity goes up, wages don't go up as well. he says i can't think of a single example. meanwhile, it was happening under his nose in the united states. so it's like you didn't have to search indeed some anthropological obscure study about something that happened way back when. it's happening in the united states. i don't know if krugman stood believes that, no, not much importance, but basically workers lost bargaining power. why did he lose bargaining power? a big factor i think with globalization. it's not globalization per se, it's globalization under the g. liberal regime which will not support workers rights to bargain, which will not support workers rights to form unions, which will not support living

wage laws. and so what happens is if workers say coming in, maybe you should talk a little bit about this with respect to wal-mart. but i would just get a background. if workers say we want a union, we want to raise, businesses say oh, ma okay, fine, we are moving to china. i don't actually have to move to china for all have to do is say we are thinking about it and that gives workers less bargaining power. one of the reasons why i'm so big on the green investment is because these investments take place for the most part within the country. anefsa businesses don't have tht same kind of leverage. do you want to talk about the wal-mart case? [inaudible] >> i believe that the rich get

richer. i thought of like wal-mart. wal-mart will tell the worker -- well, right now we're doing this thing where we have protection rights on black friday of this year. all right, and wal-mart is now telling us that, i belong to this organization called alex, which is corporation for respect. and wal-mart is not with us at all. so wal-mart is now telling us, all the employees, that our is no longer exist and that if anybody talks about or discuss it, they will be fired. so you know, --

>> which, of course, is illegal. >> which is ille, -- >> which, of course, is illegal. >> which is illegal spent but we don't even have a full, you know, labor relations board. obama tried to fill the seat and the supreme court overturned that. so this makes, these are illegal actions the. >> wal-mart is constantly doing illegal actions. as far as unionizing, because i've been working for wal-mart like 13 years now, and when i started working for wal-mart, i was in one department and that was all i took care of was my department that i was in. now i work, i'm a cashier now, but yet i have to do work in about five other departments as well. and i get just as much pain as i got a few years ago. all right, the prices keep going up, but my pay is not going up.

as far as, you know, illegal things, you know, in canada one of wal-mart stores, they became unionized. following day of wal-mart closed the store down. here in the states, i think it was in california, was at? the meat department, butchers who are cutting the meat, they unionized. there are no longer any meat cutters in wal-mart. it's frozen foods and now that you get, frozen meat. that's why i say the rich keep getting richer. the six waltons that, that are the main waltons, they are the

six richest people in this country. and yet what drives me crazy is the government doesn't do anything about it, you know? one of the incidents right now that's going on that's driving me up a wall is wal-mart made this big deal about hiring the veterans. these men and women, they rest their lives -- they risked their lives for their country and wal-mart is offering them jobs. well, the jobs that they are offering our part-time jobs because wal-mart doesn't hire full-time employees anymore. they are offering them part-time jobs, and they are offering them poppy wages. these men and women risked their lives for the country, and that's what wal-mart has to

offer them. >> and they got a great publicity. so anyway, you know, it is unions, announced a few weeks ago, unionization rate is at the lowest point in 97 years. who is going to stand up and fight for this? it's a very difficult situation. and that's why over two generations i think we see this, if businesses can get away with it, they will get away with it. at the same time we can build an economy in which workers are treated with respect in which wages due at least, at least rise with productivity, and a full employment economy. and by the way, rich people would still be living very nicely. >> i was wondering, a lot of skill workers and defense contractors, how do you envision

transitioning from that very specialized work to other areas that take those skills with them? >> in some of these really boring technical studies that fred mentioned, and this book that is coming up, we do go through that stuff. the level, the types of skills that would be required to expand, the green economy, are not all that different than the types of skills that are required within the military. so of course they don't match up perfectly and, of course, there would be transitions, and yet, the thing that people focus on what we talk about job losses, there will be job losses. we will cut the coal industry and have, that means half the jobs are going to get lost. but there's going to be more jobs in the green economy. so again it's a matter of thinking how did you transition

into fairway. and if we had a super fun, this is not my line, but i think it's a very good insight. that we need of a superfund for people who were going to be displaced by the transition out of the fossil fuel economy. we have a superfund for dirt. how about having a superfund for people? so yeah, i think that's an important part of the transition. where do you see living wage, what would be a good living wage, if you talk about that? >> i think if you want to think, course it's different for different communities i have to say one number, $13 an hour would be a good minimum living wage. yes, for one person. you know, there is a proposal

now for raising the minimum to 10, which, of course, i support which is lower, after you correct for inflation. the minimum, the minimum, rock bottom, rock-bottom minimum that people pay, in 1968 in today's dollars was over $10 an hour. in 1968. i mean, and i'm not talking special places like santa monica, california, or something but i'm talking about if you walked in, you are 16 and he walked into mcdonald's somewhere in east texas, they had to pay you $10 an hour. that was the law, if they were not going to violate the law. so to say you're going to give this $10 an hour, not really to come is not talking about progress. it's talking about reducing the level of regress that we've

experienced. and then they get, the reason i said 13 is my colleague at the university of massachusetts, who i told you to get in touch with, she did some research and she asked the question, there is a point in which if you keep raising the minimum, there will be some discussion in terms of employment and she thinks that cut off is about $13 an hour. >> that can mean they are pushing -- >> a little bit. they could a little bit. >> i was reading an article about waitresses, all right. now, they might -- they make like something $2 an hour. if they had a minimum-wage, all right, it would cost us 10 cents

more for our meal. spirit and that's a lot of my research, does that kind of comparison. >> i'm going out to dinner. i'm not thinking about how much money i'm spending. i'm going out to dinner. so if i'm spending $12 -- if i'm spending $12.90 a day, but that girl or that guy, that waiter or waitress is making a decent living wage, you know, i don't think 10 cents is going to hurt me. and i don't think it's going to hurt anybody is going out to have dinner. >> that, you know, i think this comparison is, and one of the ones was instead a new mexico which has the highest living wage standard in the country right now.

so i was part of the project to create the law. and what happened in the city, before the law actually it was passed in a challenge. that's what i was there. there was a trial to but before the law was implemented, the reason there was a trial was because some of the restaurants sued the city and said the law was illegal. now, at the trial those same people had the gall to say, this whole thing is really unfair to me because now i'm losing customers because they said i don't want to pay a living wage. in fact, they said, you know, there's other restaurants in the city that are putting up signs saying we pay living wages. and guess what? all the people are going there. and you're right. they pay another 30 cents. i don't even know the difference. you are exactly right. that's what all my research -- was people decide to go out and they have a range in terms of

their not going to go to the fanciest restaurant, but if you say of this 10, $13 for a new, if it's $12.841310, you don't even notice it. that's exactly what happened in this city. and it wasn't the people were necessary big spenders but for another 20 cents, they would support living wages in their community. >> is that cut down the other waitressing jobs? >> well, that is a big debate in economics, whether what really happens is you stop hiring. and th effects are evident, this after all, years and years and years. the facts are you don't see that. the rate at which it increases may slow down slightly. so like an example like at a

mcdonald's, you start to have the machines were people fill up their own classes instead of having somebody fill up the glass. but generally speaking there isn't evidence that shows that employment goes down. i mean, it may go down a little bit. sometimes it may go up a little bit. and it may go up because people are willing to say, you know, we are ethical people. we want to see the workers have a decent wage. and if a restaurant is doing that, great. we will go to that restaurant and that is exactly what happened when it became one of the best things about the whole living wage movement, which was in the '90s, early 90s up until about, really up to the crisis, was that you had these discussions in communities where ordinary people just got together, most people never thought about what you just said. once they heard it then it meant something to them.

>> i was just going to say, these companies that don't pay a living wage, all right, will pay for them. like i said, i represent, i work at wal-mart for like 13 years, all right. i make $12.70 an hour. after 13 years. i am entitled from the government, i get help with my oil. i get food stamps, you know? i can get all kinds of help from the government. who is paying for this? you are. it's coming out of your tax. so you are paying for, you're helping the waltons get richer. >> that's a great point to end on i think i want to thank bob

for a terrific presentation. and everybody else for participating. we have copies of the book at the counter for sale, and we will be having bob assign. so thank you all for coming. [applause] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with the booktv guests and viewers. watch videos and get updated information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> booktv recently visited mesa, arizona, with help of our cable partner cox communication. don critchlow gives a history of potential movement in hollywood. his book is "when hollywood was right: how movie stars, studio moguls and big business remade america politics." the conservative movement started really in the

post-second world war two period. although there were early examples of conservative activity in the 1920s, 1930s. but you need to remember that hollywood is, was and always is about making money. so the early studios were primarily concerned with getting established, making a lot of money. but the 1930s when the great depression came, we see in california particular a resurgence of democrats in the 1934, a socialist and well-known author, upton sinclair, was able to win the governor's nominati nomination, or the nomination for governor for the democratic party. and the studios, hollywood studios went really dessert with

the idea of a social -- berserk with a socialist coming into office. for one thing, sinclair was talking about nationalizing the film industry. so the studios, people such as louis b. mayer and warner bros., and others, poured money into it, the anti-sinclair campaign. and they were able to defeat him in 1934. so that's the beginnings of conservatism and republican activity. so by the time of the second, in the post-second world war two period, the republican party was really in complete disarray, factionalized. and so what i explain in my book, "when hollywood was right," is how a small group of movie stars, studio moguls, and california businessman got

together and rebuild the republican party, ultimately electing ronald reagan as governor, and as president in 1980. it was an informal alliance. the movie stars such as john wayne, robert montgomery, robert taylor, barbara stanwyck, many of these names are not known by your younger viewers. walt disney who was well-known for his cartoons, his disney studios. and then a group of businessmen, people like justin who was found of rexall drugs, walter knox who established knox berry farms, people like leonard firestone, the heir to the firestone family, and they came in. they decided to rebuild the

republican party. democratic registration in california had far surpassed the republican party. and at the same time, the republicans were very, very factionalized throughout the 1950s and 1960s your so in rebuilding the party it meant, it meant putting money into the party. but it also meant taking these well-known stars and sending them out to speak the civic clubs and fraternal organizations, republican clubs, throughout southern california. so robert taylor who is a big star in the day was sent out to places like fontana and riverside, and people like ginger rogers who is another republican, who was sent out to

speak to the group. primarily what brought them together is they were republicans who work on sound with big government, especially the expansion of big government during roosevelt's new deal in the 1930s. and so they wanted to scale back government. they wanted what republicans always want, fewer taxes. but at the same time they were also interested in boosting the economy. making this, making the state of california a good place to bring business. so they were concerned with labor issues, especially the role with labor and the democratic party. and while they wanted small government they also wanted defense contracts. so they used republicans such as

former actor and dance man george murphy, who was at the tail end of his career, they used him as a lobbyist to talk to vice president richard nixon who was then vice president of dwight d. eisenhower, to make sure that the eisenhower administration was sending them defense contracts. the republicans were quite successful, in california. if you look at the very end, that is 1980, when they elect ronald reagan. in other words, one of the actors who have been involved in this campaign to revitalize the republican party. but this ultimate success shouldn't belie the fact that they had their ups and downs. there was infighting over candidates.

and 52, some of the hollywood moguls such as louis b. mayer and ginger rogers, and others, wanted a man by the name of taft to win the nomination. they didn't like eisenhower. and then in 1964, the senator from arizona ran in the primary, and actually some of the republicans, such as justin and leonard firestone, supported nelson rockefeller who was seen as the eastern establishment. they thought that goldwater wasn't the best candidate, and he was supported by the far right, who they didn't like. so it was conservatives fighting on the far right. it's a story of the republican party then and today,

factionalism and fighting and political power. today, the conservatives in hollywood, republicans are trying to regroup. there's some well-known stars that are conservative. they had tried to organize. many of the hollywood conservatives today are libertarians, which is good politics for hollywood because libertarians believe that individual freedom, smaller government and less taxes. anyway, i would say that the real story of "when hollywood was right" is in this period from the 1940s, late 1940s up to 1980. but conservatives and republicans in hollywood still

have a history of how they were able to regroup and have influence on southern california national politics. so there's history to be told, and maybe history for those few republicans and conservatives in hollywood to learn. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to mesa, arizona, and the many other cities visited by our local content vehicles, go to c-span.org/localcontent. >> last month booktv launched our online book club with a discussion of michelle alexander's book, the new jim crow. and all month long you posted your comments on a facebook page and on twitter which culminate in a live moderated discussion. here's what some of you had to say. on twitter diane said the whole building a farc is brilliant.

>> join us this month as we read jeb bush, immigration wars. forging an american solution. as you read, post your thoughts on twitter at booktv using the hashtag, #btvbookclub. you can watch jeb bush's recent appearance on booktv by visiting our website, booktv.org and then join us on tuesday april 30 at 9 p.m. eastern for live moderator discussion on twitter and facebook. ..