i have no problem with the government giving a hand to someone that suffers a loss of job. i think where there's been a backlash is for example giving people two years unemployment. most americans say wait a minute the government is going to give you some assistance but for two years we are not so sure that is smart. a lot of these welfare programs in my opinion that have become substitutes for work.

i think the food stamp program is a good example of that. this is a program to help people when they are temporarily in need. now we have 48 million people in the country on food stamps. that's one out of every seven. there is something wrong with our economy or government. when one out of every seven families means the government to put food on their table. >> what is wrong with fairness and economics? >> i believe in fairness and growth and the reason i wrote this is the truth is i don't want to spoil the ending but the truth is the fair system of the mall is the free enterprise system. that's what creates the growth and jobs and the opportunity. when you have a free enterprise system that is what creates the highest living standard for the vast majority of the people. one of my concerns and motivation for this book is i believe we have moved away from the free enterprise system and

have become too dependent on handouts. i'm not talking about welfare, payments to the welfare mothers or that lose their jobs. there is a massive corporate welfare in this country giving away hundreds of billions of dollars a year to corporations. i don't think the government should be picking winners and losers in the free market system. >> is it fair to tax people a different way and tax the wealthy people like warren buffett at a higher rate than you would middle class -- >> i don't think so and here's why. the most economically, the system that would create the most jobs and opportunity, the most well for america is a flat rate from the system. not four, five, six, seven. this is a system that i think can be defended not just by

economic growth models because most people would agree just in terms of growth in the system with lower rates. but also on fairness and let me make this case to you. in you and i make the same amount of money. i know you make more than i do but let's say we make this amount. if we live next door to each other we make the same amount. there is something fundamentally unfair. you pay less taxes than might and one of the virtues of the flat tax system is that everybody pays their fair share. everybody pays the same rate. there's not all fees' car walz. you don't get a deduction for investing in wind mills all this other stuff and they say that is a fair system. you made ten times more money than i do you pay ten times more tax. >> you are right and who's the fairest of them all. one of the premises of the book

is that it is equally needy even more plausible to say that liberals don't care about poor people. >> let me put it like this. i believe a lot of these programs created over the last 50 or 60 years created and increased the poverty in this country we wouldn't have if we stuck with a system much more dependent on the free enterprise system. we have seen now those generations of americans trapped in this kind of poverty cycle that keeps going on from one generation to the next. if we put in place the policies that i talk about in this book of the flat rate income tax letting people invest their own money and social security so they can earn a decent retirement living and giving every american whether they are rich or poor the most opportunities and choices in terms of where they send their kids to school. >> we often talk to people who say the middle class -- i want

to see if there is any difference here. those who say the middle class is no better off today should try living for a week or two without a personal computer, cell phone, color tv much less satellite or hd, the internet, air-conditioning, modern medicine, wal-mart, etc.. there for the middle class is much better off today. >> i did a lot of people were listening to this and say how can the middle class be a rauf than they were? this face it the last four or five years have been tough on the middle class. the economy hasn't done very well the middle class middle to the comedian has fallen by $3,000 since the recession began said this has been a tough time for the middle class. absolutely. i'm talking about if you compare the same thing the middle class has access to today versus 25 years ago there is no comparison. all those things you mentioned,

the computer, the cell phone, the ipad. it's a modern treatment. let me give you one example in medicine. it the plant from 30 years ago you would have been diagnosed with cancer but the factor is essentially handing you a death certificate. today we have high survival rates. the same for heart disease and so many other ailments. look what has happened with aids. we reduced the rate by 90% in 25 years. that is an astonishing achievement. i find this to be very peculiar by the way when i talk to young people because they believe it is a terrible time to be alive that there's all these problems in the world and we are inherent in this terrible situation. i said how many of you in the room have a cell phone? how many of you have a laptop

computer? they all raised their hand. half the kids listening, and then they look at me with this like of course we have these things. by the way my 18 and 19-year-old think living without a cell phone and ipad and laptop computers and the internet, they think that is like the friend plans to an era. they can't imagine living without these things. we know and we are old enough to remember when we didn't have these things and wasn't so long ago. every time i give my speech on this and i tell the story in the book one of my favorite movies, remember the movie wall street where there's a great scene where gordon played by michael douglas if you haven't seen the movie he's the master of the universe and he's walking down the beaches of atlantic city and he has a cell phone in his hand and it's like a break with an antenna coming out of it. so i went back because the was made almost 25 years ago, 1987.

i looked at how much that cell phone costs in 1987. do you want to take a guess? $4,000. by the way not a smartphone, it didn't have a camano or gps, that's the kind of progress we have seen that has benefited the middle class so much. let me just mention something else you brought up, wal-mart. as we speak i've been writing at "the wall street journal" about a big fight washington, d.c. is having with a one to require wal-mart to people dollars and 50 cents per hour to the workers now wal-mart is saying if you do this we may not locate in washington, d.c.. we may locate in the outer region because we can't afford this $12.50 sent wheat rage -- rate. who would the people be that are hurt cracks that three or 400

people that wouldn't get those jobs but more importantly, wal-mart gives people everyday low prices. you go into wal-mart today you can get damn near anything you want for 99 cents. there's a number of studies to suggest -- this is something to think about -- wal-mart has done more to lift the living standards of poor people than all of the government anti-poverty programs over the last year's. >> so more in the senior economics writer for "the wall street journal" editorial page, is income inequality something we should keep an eye on? >> sure. absolutely. there is no question if you look over the last 30 years you've seen an immense amount of fortune. almost unimaginable history and look at bill gates has more money than most countries. and warren buffett, too.

we have billionaires' that even during the gilded age we didn't have so much wealth. the question i always ask is does it occur to anyone that bill gates has 40 or $50 billion. i would say no my goodness. alone he has created thousands of millionaires and so has warren buffett and the people who create the businesses. what i worry about is too much in the. what we need is more warren buffett's and more people like steve jobs. look, steve jobs is another great example. he created the industries and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the country. now when he died he was a multimillionaire. but i think most people think the country was greatly enriched by the fact steve jobs was here. now what i this say is that there is too much concentration. you're asking about income distribution.

that's the focus of too many policy makers. my focus is how do we make sure everyone is better off? over the last 25 years from a lot 1982 until the time of this recession, there is no question the middle class did better off. they saw significant income gains, not as much as the people at the top that even low-income. one of the fun statistics i have in the book is if you look at somebody at any point in time and then you say okay, ten years later how much is the income? you're not going to believe this but it's true in ten years' time the people that made the biggest economic advance our people what the bottom of the latter. that doesn't mean -- some have and some haven't but one of the great features about the american economy is that we are an income elevator. we have more ability to be, but the more than anyone. anyone can succeed in this country and we do this by the way every day with the immigrants that come into the country with only the short on their back ten or 20 years later

they are a business owner and members in the middle class were hired. >> it's been ten years since the bush tax cuts and you talk about that -- >> for the most part, yeah. >> you talk about them in your newest book who's the fairest of them all. >> here's my take on the bush tax cuts. i think president obama made a mistake in january when he insisted on repealing those because what we were doing is cutting taxes on investment and i remember i was one of the people that advised him back in 2003 and he was trying to say the budget -- how do we get this economy moving again? on the capitol and investment we get more investment in the united states, more businesses here, more jobs so that everyone benefits and i think for the most part that was a success. i'm worried now that we have raised those, we raised taxes on the businesses i have a real worry that that is actually going to hurt the job creation

process and the ever impact that this might feed that we actually encourage people in the business is to outsource countries like china, india, you know, you're not. but i hate when i see an american company building a factory somewhere else. i want those jobs here in the united states for american workers. you're not going to get those jobs if you are raising the taxes on capital and on businesses and on entrepreneurs. >> i wanted to ask you there is a long and sometimes democrats use and presidents use. they think that they have hit a home run when they started on third to begin life. >> i think that as an insulting thing to say quite frankly because there are so many examples in this country of people who -- i just mentioned

people who came in with only the shirt on their back. of luck, there is no question the people that grew up in high income neighborhoods with access to good schools, they do have an advantage over people that grow up in the inner cities in the schools and neighborhoods and that actually is something that troubles me quite frankly. what i want to see -- and this is another theme of the book. but i believe in is what we should strive for in america is the quality of opportunity. you and i should have the grace, we should both have the same opportunities to win their race. that doesn't exist so much in america today and we have to make sure every low-income person has a good school to go to and so on and so forth. but we should strive for a quality of outcomes. that is to say if we are starting the race of the same time and use print faster, you work harder, you do the right things and i don't that doesn't mean that we should have the same income 20 years from now.

>> here in america you're right we've had plenty of experience giving people an equal amount. the ramifications of such policies have rent benefitting. what are those ramifications? >> will again, i think when you have these welfare programs that are -- that have grown as they have so much -- and by the way there are over 50 welfare programs the federal level. i think that has reduced its not just to work. i think it sets people in a poverty trap. let's give them a hand up but i don't believe in giving them a permanent handout and most americans are with me on that. even if we didn't have these programs americans are generous people and they will find ways to help people in need. look, if we have an economy would grow at the rate we are at now because when you have an american hobby it isn't -- you're not going to get people out of poverty if the economy is growing at 1.5%.

you have to grow two or three times faster. this is one of the things that motivates me. what policies can we put in place right now that get us back to the three or 4% growth tax? and if we do that and the way to think about the growth is to solve the deficit problem and the wealth problem and we can have money for schools and science and all the things president obama believes in but if you don't have economic growth and we are all sticking our handout for a reduced number of models. >> we are here at freedom fest a libertarian gathering in of a guess. we talked to a couple other authors, jim rogers who spoke a little bit on the sky is falling and we are printing too much money, gold standard. do you share their views? >> i'm kind of the optimist here actually i believe in america.

the way i always put it is we have a lot of problems in this country, no doubt about it. we talk about them on your show all the time about the problems we have the way i put it is the are the least ten apple in the cart. look at all these other countries. and i do believe -- i have a quote in the book of ronald reagan that we put america here on this planet as a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world and the great thing about americans is that we are very practical people. if something isn't working, we change it and i think americans are looking and saying whenever we are doing isn't working very well and you are going to see -- i think you are going to see a lot of these ideas take fruition in the last two or five for ten years. they are going to make take a lot of people better off and that is my profound wish is we can see three, four, 5% growth.

my favorite quote and the entire book is from john f. kennedy. the rising tide. >> we have been talking with stephen moore who is the fairest of them all the truth about opportunity, taxes and wealth in america. you are watching book tv on c-span2. now more from the freedom fest. >> we want to introduce you to jim powell whose newest book is called the fight for liberty lessons from the greatest champions of the last 2000 years. what is your approach on this book? >> nobody has advanced separate tracks. a poverty rights developed with people over a long period of time. those are different people than were involved in the movement to

eradicate slavery. again, very different people than those who are involved in religious freedoms out of any particular time some tracks are very well advanced than others and not fairy much is happening. savitt is not just one interconnected thing. it's a lot of separate battles. somebody that played an important role in just one track such as frederick douglass in the abolitionist movement or william who was early in the great pioneer movement in england to abolish slavery. there were very few i encountered that made contributions in more than one track. lafayette for example played a crucial role in helping to win the american revolution by cornering cornwallis at yorktown

then he went back to france later and encouraged george washington. they were very close like father and son. washington didn't have any children that he basically got to lafayette, and lafayette bought plantations in south america, great plantations in south america and trained the slave how to farm for themselves and liberated them and washington was going along with all of this but washington was exhausted from his 20 odd years of campaigning first in the french and indian war and then in the american revolution. he couldn't do it. but eventually when lafayette was in prison during the french revolution, his son was sent to george washington. take care of my son