they didn't go because they needed a trip to las vegas. and scott walker didn't explain what the hebrew pronunciation of his son's name is because he was uninterested in sheldon adelson's support. that's what we call shameless pandering which is what was going on in las vegas. but they understood that this was, as was the case four years ago when people came to visit donald trump, that they needed, they were seeking the republican nomination for president, that they needed sheldon adelson's support. he almost single-handedly kept nude gingrich's fantasy a life long past its expiration date in the last cycle just continue to infuse money. he plainly intends to be a participant again. he is 80, shows no signs of

slowing up, so the sheldon adelson primary to me is some part of what we might call the political crystal ball. we are looking for signs, tea leaves to read. the most interesting part of that, and i look to my colleagues on the panel today who has worked for former florida governor jeb bush, is the fact that jeb bush went and participated. i think that's a very, very interesting indicator. as a lifelong democrat, i will tell you that the person that i believe has the strongest possibility to both win the nomination and be elected in 2016 is jeb bush. [inaudible] >> it's not an endorsement. >> you will ruin any of his chances. >> it's an assessment. if i can ruin his chances, and i have more power than i think i

have. but i will do that out of respect i do believe he brings the strongest credentials to that field, apparently wheatfield, but he would give a great run. whether or not he wants to run. i think the person we should ask is his mother who has said we have had too many bushes already. [laughter] i will tell you though, i think the fact that he went to las vegas shows he is at least looking at it. i don't think anyone, including hillary clinton, has made up their mind as yet. maybe if you have. maybe rick santorum knows what he's doing again in 2016. but most people really are looking at it trying to get the lay of the land and figure it out. but it is interesting to me that former governor bush was present, has made some early state trips, and again, if you want to follow this, i'll tell

you, follow the money. that's how holbrooke famously said in the garage scene in all the presidents seem to follow the money so see where the early donors are going and see if anyone is locked up for a particular presidential candidate come and follow the travel. ask people in iowa, new hampshire and south carolina who they have met lately. that will give you some idea about the 2016 field is shaping up, at least in the minds of people who think they are credible candidates. doesn't mean it will be. it means they're testing the waters. as my colleague daniel pointed out, if you are doing the same exercise early on when then former mayor rudy giuliani, sort of the front runner for the republican nomination, you would

have thought based on press accounts had it locked up. so again conventional wisdom does not exist in this process and we will prove that by sharing our unconventional wisdom today. thank you very much. [applause] >> wonderful to be with you. my crystal ball is a little bit more clear. it reads in headlines. i'm going to share six of them with you this morning, and that's it, i also agree that we will see how it goes. the funny thing about predictions is, if you hope in a time passes no one remembers them. we will see. i'm happy to tell you about these though because as you might guess as we go along that things perhaps i think we might want to see, or some of us might want. the first is the northeast which led in new england, a new

hampshire, with a sweep of women in all of its statewide offices last year will lead again the region and the renaissance of women governors. for the last decade we have gone from nine women governors to the current five. for republican women lead states and one democrat. that would be maggie hassan in new hampshire. there are three in pennsylvania, allyson schwartz in rhode island, gene, and martha coakley in massachusetts taking a second run at it. i think they will all run strong. i think we will increase the number of women governors significantly and that would be a major story in the 14 midterm election. dynasties will be much in the headlines over the next year, and then perhaps for four years. but you're going to watch

michelle nunn in georgia in what is emerging as a very interesting race where she has a clear field against an unruly field of republicans who are competing for the nomination. her father you will remember, sam nunn, served for 24 years in the house with distinction and expert on the armed services committee. that i would keep my eye there. mark udall, you all know him well, and that's another one that people will be watching closely. ben pryor in arkansas, and i think that this is important for reasons that have been alluded to. i don't know how much tolerance we have to invest in families to lead us. and it's hard to know whether the value that we come to know

about them are so clear to us that we have confidence and trust that is earned, or whether we are a lazy electorate and it's just easier to go with the brand you know. but i think this election cycle, and the next one, will put us to the test. whether we are ready for, call it a generational change, call it a shift in perception, but some different approach to how we evaluate the generations that come after. i think we're going to have an opportunity to do that. i alluded to new hampshire where we all know all politics in america is rooted. there's another contest there, you may have noticed in the last 48 hours i think, scott brown has moved into new hampshire to run against jeanne shaheen. let me just assure you, jeanne shaheen will make short work of that. [applause] i can imagine no voters in the

country, live free or die, you're going to come into our state, tell us you're going to represent us, and i thought, really interesting. really interesting. so i don't know what it is -- [inaudible] >> i feel like the one thing you want to watch about that move is, who is behind it and for what reason related to the presidential election coming up. so i think that is an important thing to watch for. my crystal ball stops there. the d.c. mayor's race, where the mayor -- and it's unclear to me from the left coast what exactly was underneath this. it always troubles me when law enforcement officers bring charges so close to an election, and most wisely don't. i think a lot of information came out late in that election,

and a woman council member beat a sitting mayor running for reelection. there have been in the last months in various pockets of our country romanelli in my own, unfortunate scandals. not really scandals, just crimes, people charged with crimes. i know the mayor of charlotte was indicted -- with a state senator incentives to who was indicted following the indictment of two other state senators for unrelated crimes. and i do think that we are reaching a tipping point. again we ask ourselves, what is it that allows for this to go on and on and on. and what is the antidote? i can tell you that historically the antidote to this problem has been elect women. and you may all remember that, i think in the 1990s in arizona when the state of their --

arizona said, are you kidding me? they had a governor who i believe, i think he was indicted, and they then swept, windswept all the top offices in arizona. we call that in our work the virtue today. i will tell you, it has pretty much, as women have become more and more prominent and leaders, that advantage in many ways has fallen away. but in some sense for some voters, and voters skew older as you know, there was some vestige of it. so i was a whether that election heralds a trend, it is not probably the beginning of a big trend but i would ask you to watch how voters react in this next election to the issue of fast and loose. i think, to my colleagues point, there is a great deal of foot with jeb bush, and i hope ana

will eliminate more on this point. but the one i'm interested in and the one i'm really, i hope heralds a good discussion for the country is the acceptance of immigration reform as something that we must do, that we should do for a host of reasons, including a compassionate one to keep families together. and i think republican congressional candidates will be grateful to him over this next 12, 24, 36 months. because the language the debate has devolved into is divisive and no one can move off their position. he has come straight at it and said, we have to do this. we have to do it better. there are great reasons for

doing it. and it gives everyone else cover to find the right place for them to talk about the issues in a constructive way, and that is terrific. so we hope that will make a difference. what you don't want to see is a simple shuffling of the lingo so that we end up in a highly partisan place on issue yet again with no progress. so watch for progress, but a hopeful sign in the crystal ball. and then finally i just want to say i think the mccutchen a decision by the supreme court recently on campaign finance reform is unfortunate, albeit consistent, and here's what i mean. if you agree with buckley that speech and money are the same, then this was a consistent decision. but the unintended consequences of that decision, we live with

every day in the concept, porousness between policy and money. it's unhealthy. it's unwholesome, and it's choking, choking our legislators and our congress. so i would just say to you while i do not see in my crystal ball a short term solution for this, it is the one thing that will make a huge difference to the way we do public policy, and probably have a big effect on all of the other issues i think. so i will stop there. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. you know, i had a crystal ball and there's going to bring it with me this morning. but i was i was look at it this point i didn't see a reason to. i saw marion barry and the mayor

of toronto smoking crack, and they got all cloudy. then it's her to disobey a little bit i saw a tweet from anthony weiner, lost the primary to the velocity of in new york and i was afraid to read it. so i'm going to abandon that. however, i want to approach them a little differently today. i know we have many panels here who will talk about the candidates and the play-by-play. i'm going to step back for a moment and talk about something that a deal is going to affect this election, the midterm election as well as the presidential, and it's going to affect our politics here in this country and abroad pretty significantly. and that issue is the fact that many americans today feel

threatened. we feel threatened, our jobs are threatened. our standing in the world is threatened, and this is going to realign not just the electorate, but how politicians react to this electorate. if you think about it, i actually worked for doug kofman when he ran, so i saw a starting to foment very early in the tea party. was in a sense of reaction to this. there is a fear among the electorate of where america's place is in the world today. and this is going to have very, is shifting the politics in this country but i will also step back even further for just one moment, among western democracies in those countries

that associate themselves with it, we are seeing this in those countries as well. hungry just elected a primus again and gave him a greater far right majority. we know what's going on initial. we see this going on in france, in germany, in the netherlands. people are feeling threatened. let's talk about how this is going to affect the politics, the politicians and the policies that they're going to start promoting in elections. it has been, for example, we spoke about the tea party panel yesterday, i don't how many people were there for that. but you already see that a lot of those pushbutton issues that fomented that anger within the tea party were issues that are now being co-opted by the

establishment republican party, you know, fiscal responsibility, school choice, issues like that. but now we're going to see that, the major parties are going to start to adopted, and so are the candidates. they going to adapt -- adopted portion of the. it's very understandable. unemployment is still rather high. corporations are making a lot of money because they are more productive, but they are being more productive with fewer people. so they are not hiring back a lot of the people that were let go during the recession. so on the economic front, how our candidates are going to address these issues is going to have a major impact. you know, i'm glad you brought up immigration, mary. the immigration form, this is why you have people like john mccain who, in the very early stages, were all for the d.r.e.a.m. act. they were for -- the

establishment republican party in many senses was for it. been a shift changes, and i will say that this shift, you cannot only blame the tea party. there's many conservative democrats who were out there today who also feels this threat against their jobs and their well being. there is some cross party pollination if i may on that issue. even foreign policy, and i know it's not a big motivator in the elections, but it's going to play a lot in the way the candidates coming forward are going to be handling our foreign policy issues. for example, how does everybody feel about drone policy? everybody happy with it? well, you know why that is kind of all you hear about in our

fight against al-qaeda and many of the other terrorists? because on the domestic front, obama can do that on his own. to do a greater, to have a greater impact in this fight to secure our country against terrorism, we would need to do many of the elements that we did during the cold war, where we used soft power, where our embassies were around the world, even incomes countries, were little springs of american authors, american music, american culture. none of that is around today in the countries where we need it the most. those are places where they don't like us. this has an impact in the sense that if you are, let's say, the arab world, the only see a scene from america are drones.

they don't see the writers. they don't see the progresses. they don't see the culture of women. they don't see our music is much. even though the internet is there, it's not coming through our official modes of communication. and why is that? because domestically it's becoming very difficult to fund those things. you don't see it immediate impact from these, and congress is going to be difficult time with the mood of the electorate today, with threatening since that we have as americans to fund these things. you were going to send my money over there? so those countries can read about our authors when we need that money here? that's the sense we are having. so this dynamic of the threatened american is playing into our elections very much,

and it's going to affect the way the candidates move forward. this is not something that's going to be solved in an election, so in that sense, i'm not a big proponent of another bush-clinton election, i have to be honest with you. but whoever the candidates are, these issues are going to live for a while in our nation. they are not going to be solved quickly, and those candidates that can navigate these waters are going to be the most successful. the ones tha taken give americaa sense of confidence to move forward, and a sense that it's not over. thank you. [applause] >> i think i'm on the far left in order, but i think i might be on the far right when it comes to this panel.

of the things that haven't been mentioned and then i'll talk about some of the things that have been mentioned. we are in 2014. it may seem to some we are in 2015 because everybody is really focused and interested and riveted by the presidential race is already and who's in, who's out, who's reading tea leaves and who's a meeting with him. but i think 2014 is something we have to focus on and it's going to have a lot of affect on what happens, vis-à-vis, 2016. 2014, most experts, most people conclude that the republicans will keep the house. i think that is true. but then the question of when it comes to the house becomes, what happens with john boehner? if the republicans to keep the house who will be the next speaker? i think that's going to have a huge impact on legislative agenda in the next coming years.

i happen to think john boehner still has fight in him, and i happen to think he's going to stay can't. but i think he genuinely does not know what he is going to do. also we've had an enormous amount of retirements of some house veterans, including committee chairs in the last couple of months that have been announced. so we're going to have an entirely new makeup in many committees. we are going to see some pretty ferocious dogfights asked who are going to be the new chairs, the new ranking members in the house but it's going to be a new world order in the house of representatives. and we've got the u.s. senate. until a few months ago the basic consensus was the democrats had a lead and were likely to keep it. that's become less of a prediction in the last several weeks. republicans have been able to

field some pretty good candidates this year, and people who can when generals. there's a lot of red state democrats that are concerned, that are in races, that are running as far away as they possibly can from president obama. won't be seen in public with them, no matter what is offered. so i think that's something that we're going to have to watch very closely, and it's going to tell us that effect of obamacare. i don't think it's going to be nearly as bad and all about obamacare as a lot of my republican colleagues belief. but i also don't think it's the panacea and the utopia that a lot of democrats want to paint it as. and we still have a lot of

information when it comes to obamacare that need to be dissected. of the 7 million that enrolled, how many have paid? how old are they? how many were already pre-insured? how many are new injured? there's a lot of things that need to be known before we know if this thing is going to work, how it's going to work, and then there is a host of exemptions and delays that have been put in place at some point are going to have to be addressed and resolved, obviously it will happen after the election but at some point that's going to have to be confronted. also i think the social issues are so very interesting as to how they are shaping up. there's several states, including my state of florida, that has to legalize marijuana issue on the ballot. what we are going to see with the gay-rights movement. there is public, might be a majority of states that allow

gay rights and gay marriage by the time 2016 rolls around, not because of the political fronts, but because of the judicial front. so how much of an issue will that still be in 2016? i think another interesting aspect of 2014 is going to be the overall shape of the republican party. we saw in 2010, we saw in 2012 a lot of veteran mainstream republicans frankly get caught asleep at the wheel. icollege getting lugar. they got richard lugar to. they never went home states. they been have houses there. they became a washington commodities but they didn't work hard. they did raise that money. they didn't spend time. they didn't spend the resources. they didn't shake the flesh. they didn't eat the rubber chicken. that's not happening this year.

you've got a lot of veteran mainstream republicans that are being challenged in primaries, and they're winning. mitch mcconnell, wiley as he is, i predict he survives. i think lindsey graham is going to do just fine. i think we're going to see a resurgence of folks, of the mainstream republicans come back, fight hard, and shake up what the branding and definition of the public and party has been in the last couple of years. and that in turn is going to have an effect in 2016. then let me just talk a little bit about the quote unquote sheldon adelson primary. you know, the reason, there's something called the republican

jewish committee. it's been around since 1985. it is an important organization. it goes above and beyond sheldon adelson. it discusses very important issues, and top republican lawmakers, candidates, have been showing up to these conferences for decades, not to see sheldon adelson or kiss his ring, but because it's an important issue. the same way that many, many republicans and democrats show up every year to the aipac annual conference, in the same way that many democrats tracked over to the haim sabaan, one for a powerful, wealthy billionaire jewish country better, and i can tell you, everybody from president barack obama to president clinton to secretary

of state hillary clinton tracked to his conferences. so it really is i think the meaning to the rjc which is a very well established an important organization to choose climate as a sheldon adelson primary. that does not mean that money isn't important it doesn't mean that sheldon adelson is an important it doesn't mean george soros isn't important it doesn't mean that haim saban's checkbook isn't important. but it also let us remember that this is an entire organization that has existed and will exist before and after sheldon adelson. on jeb bush, you all want to know about, he's a longtime friend of mine. is also my tenant. i saw him yesterday in fact at lunch. lunch. >> was he in new hampshire, by any chance? [laughter] no, he lives in coral gables,

florida. and i think, you know, i suspect that's part of what shakes his immigration views. the fact that it's an immigrant community, and a lot of times the immigration debate can be about faceless government statistics, how many people crossed the border, how many deportees, how many children of undocumented born here, it can be all about faceless numbers. but when you live in an immigrant community, when you speak spanish fluently come when you watch a spanish tv, you know these stories and you know there are people, mothers, women who get raped by human smugglers when they're crossing the border. and risk their lives swimming across a river or taking a raft to the united states. a lot of times leave children behind that they may not see for a decade. and it's and hope that they can come your and find work and help

support those families and loved ones they have left behind. have they broken the law? yes, absolutely. is it an act of love? i will tell you it's hard to argue when i play those circumstances that is not an act of love for those families. so i think where he is, where he lives, the story shapes some of that perception. i don't think you have to read many kiwis when it comes to jeb, because i know it's surprising, but, you know, he pretty much told us what he's thinking and where his head is, and he's a very disciplined guy. i think he's going to stick to his timeline, even when it comes to his own internal decision-making process. he has said what is criteria is but it needs to be okay with his family. and by that i don't think it means mama bush as much as it means the woman had been married

to for 40 years now, and his children. what effect it's going to have on them. running for president today means doing it as a. it's not just one person. it affects the entire family's life, the entire family's privacy. he also said he wants to be able to do it joyfully. he wants to be able to offer a positive vision. he wants to be able to offer solutions. he has said he's going to sit down, think about it over the summer, think about it later this year and make a decision. the guy, i know him, he means what he says and he says what he means. i don't think he's doing this, unicode we've gotten accustomed that politics is the art of the political peace, people who are trying to promote the sale of the book or maybe trying to get a gig on cable news, which is not a bad gig, you know?

get themselves on "dancing with the stars," who knows? tried to find themselves some relevancy. frankly i don't think jeb bush needs that, nor it is about that for the is a very nefarious guy who is doing very well, businesswise, who's got a fulfilled life. and so i think it is about that location for service and its the right thing for the family and for the country. we will know. i get calls about this all the time from reporters, from donors, from everybody. in fact my least favorite calls are the ones which ask me, what happens if marco rubio and jeb bush run? they are both friends of mine, so that point i will go into a fetal position and just cry. so after hyperventilating and having anxiety about jeb bush,

marco rubio, marco rubio versus jeb bush questions for a while, i've now decided there ain't nothing i can do about it. i think the decision comes from within them. i do think it's about who else is running. so for the meantime, i'm going to be in colorado talking to all of you. at some point next year they will tell me what the hell they're going to and we will go from there. [applause] >> i'm going to give -- >> the person who hasn't, the person who has been mentioned in terms of political crystal ball is hillary clinton. i think everybody assumes that she will run and she has frozen the field. and i think if anything there is more pressure on her to announce a decision quickly, because she is the, well, she is i will see

the donkey in the room because i don't want to call her in the old interim because she's a democrat, but she's basically got the entire democratic field frozen. and so i suspect we're going to hear and we should hear from hillary clinton shortly after the 2014 election, if she's not running and everybody else gives, a lot of other people give it as a fact, given the fact that she's going to run, i'm not sure. guess what? she does have a book to sell, and presidential speculation, boy, it's good for business. the three clintons are making 10 event appearances in the next four days in eight states. folks, that ain't for free. so i'm telling you, presidential speculation has been very good. they don't need the money, but i know and i like bill clinton

very much and i can tell you, clintons never met a dollar they haven't liked. and more power to them. as a republican, i'm all about speed is paid to get in but i want to make sure that there's an opportunity for the other panelists to comment on the comments of their fellow panelists. and i would also invite people are interested in asking questions to come up to the two mic. as we are i do in the repartee i will open the field for questions. of course you can clap for her, absolutely. of course,. [applause] >> very well-deserved. i want to point out that i agree with ana, the most important thing is bourbon or scotch, did you say? if you're. i've started already. because that's the only way to get through this. the art a couple of things that with all respect i can't leave i'm responded.

first off i want to buy some people and say i agree completely with ana on obamaca obamacare, but i don't think it is for what i call the affordable care act, which was painted as obamacare in order to demonize it. you don't hear social security called roosevelt security. this was done deliberately and again as often is the case, the right wing succeed in finding something in order to demonize it before it even had chance to go into effect. all right, having said that, i agree that i don't think it's going to play out as the inevitable negative about of the expenditures are painted already into many of these competitive races. i will say though that a think we're going to continue to see this as one of those issues that some democrats shamefully, shamefully are running away from with it, if, in fact, they said about sids i cast that vote. people more than anything else

since hypocrisy but a sense cowardice. when democrats who have cast a vote and resolve this in iraq when they been backpedal on that, that's really where the voters say, i don't care what your position is. i just want you to stand up for what you believe in, even if i disagree with you. that's what we will see is where people are and whether they're willing to own their position. i also have to respectfully disagree with ana i had to characterize the jewish republican event. if sheldon adelson was not the centerpiece of the, those people would not have shown up in the numbers they did and it would have had the attention that he got the best just a fact. >> they have been going every year. it's an annual event. i was added in -- >> i know that, as a matter of fact, as a jewish democrat. but let me just say, the difference here is that people who came, came with an agenda.

it is not a packed. they came with an agenda to be noticed by one particular individual, and they achieved that. having -- >> it's kind of fun to me that when haim saban, one of the largest democrats don't have seminal is covered, which by the name -- by the wacom is named haim saban conference and he is a haim saban middle east center -- >> he also was power rangers. >> power rangers and innovation. he's got a lot of money. when he has a conference and people like barack obama, hillary clinton and bill clinton sure, that's about policy. when the republican jewish committee has a conference, that's about money. >> how much money does he give? it's all about money. how much money does haim saban get? >> he gives many millions of dollars. >> does it ever go into the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of don't? >> it probably is in the tens of

millions of dollars spent lifetime. not in a cycle. no one compares to sheldon adelson. >> he had nobody to give you last time. he is a hillary clinton person, not a barack obama person. >> this could go on for a long time and want to make sure the other panelists have a chance to comment. >> they turned our microphones off. >> turned them back on. >> mr. chairman, i paid for this microphone. [laughter] >> i also want to request that a panelist not interrupt each other, that they give each other a chance to speak, but did not interrupt a. [applause] so david gunn be want to finish? >> i yield the floor to my colleague. >> then let daniel and i have, if they want and then i will open it up for questions. >> my only comment was is, it's all about money and that is the tragedy. if this is what's in a crystal ball and it's all about money, then let's get back to square

one. >> as many of you know, love me for it, i'm a republican, although i have to, it's going to kill me, i have to agree with david. [laughter] the adelson, newt gingrich was one of my clients his last presidential run. and the candidates did go there for money. i have to be honest with you, i don't find anything wrong with it. presidential races are expensive and candidates on both sides do this. so let's not pretend here that my candidate -- they all do it. that said, i just want to touch on two things. the establishment republicans are making a comeback. that's granted, ma and then i've talked about this a little bit before, he goes they are starting to co-opt, many of the messages that the tea party had that were more normal, if i

could use that term. and regarding hillary clinton, this is a phenomenal act we are seeing right now. if she does not run for president, the democrats are going to be in a freefall for a while. and you will be very interesting to see on this side of the aisle what happens. thank you. >> let's go to our questions. young man, are you a student? okay, then go ahead sir. >> thank you. >> get close enough so i can be heard. it occurs to me it's ironic that as a great letter, as a president, chief justice powers is the card of the sleep of politics and he's an ied for the peoples vehicle of democracy because he keeps the money flowing. >> do you have a question? >> the question is, do you see them as an improvised explosive

device, dynamiting democracy? >> money in politics, right? >> he does so because he sort of in a free spot. he has a job for life, and he speaks as a controller of the rest of the justices of the supreme court. and i am very glad that chief justice, that justice ginsburg is there as an opponent. the question is, is powers there to undermine -- >> roberts. >> is roberts there to undermine the democracy he is supposedly protecting? >> i would just say this. i'm going to not address the question head-on, but if you were really wanted campaign finance reform, how about this for an idea? you allow anybody to donate as much money as they want to any candidate they want, but you do

transparently but in 24 hours it needs to be online so everybody can see. that will tell you more about a candidate and any 30-second commercial you will ever see. how's that? [applause] >> it's unfortunately, it sounds great, but it is unfortunately inadequate in an era where you have independent expenditures, where the money doesn't go to the candidates and what that is allowed to remain private. and more of that money actually is in the pockets, the money that goes directly to candidates. speed you are absolutely correct. when campaign finance to form first became an issue, molly ivins was still a life here, and we debated that very issue. although as a consultant, i have, and all transparent to i make a fortune on these. at the medevac i was really something i can moreland commission in new york for not devoting who the donors were to

one of these organizations. that said, i have to agree. i would prefer to see a world in which they do not exist, but then allow people to donate as much as they want to the parties and to the candidates and make that totally transparent. put it online. and as i said before, it will take more about the candidate than anything else. thank you. >> first of all, i look at the political scene and i'm reminded of richard hofstadter's anti-intellectualism in american life. i have a question for ms. hughes. you spoke of praise of governor jeanne shaheen as a powerful woman in politics. are you equally enthused about governor nikki haley and governor jan brewer? >> no. [laughter] [applause] >> kodansha. >> of course not. >> why?

>> well, for different reasons i think. one, iso- they disagree with the priority that, i wish they have run their state. so it's pretty fundamental to my feminism is very broad, but it is not without and underpinning of clear values and priorities. so i can say that, ana, i love what she does on "meet the press" because it's good for women, all women, that she has capable as she has. but i also enjoy from my couch disagree with her. that's the way i feel about those two governors. >> i agree with her because i think the end of sexism and the definition of modern feminism is

having the freedom to choose based on qualifications, based on character, based on experience, based on the person not based on gender, not based on race, not based on those issues. [applause] basha we have made progress and broken deceiving, when it's the freedom to choose. >> to overhear. young man, are you a student? you step up. you get to come first. sorry. we will come back to you. herself i want to say thank you to all the panels. it's nice good debate. been a student and one who has campus on local issues and registereregistere d voters i'm always struck by the disillusionment as was just the frustration. young voters and the millennial generation on the federal government. going forward, looking into your crystal ball, how do you see

young voters playing into the political atmosphere quick you can put on this in a variety of different ways, such as gifted as a shift of focus from all the frustrations of the federal government, seeing more progress at the local and state governments as well as the increasing price of education, and then if you have graduates who are educated versus a number of having gone to college, i think you can kind of look at these issues in a few different ways, so i'm interested to hear what you have to say on this. >> can i come back to the question to you, if i may? did you vote in the last presidential election? >> i did. >> you don't have to answer this, do you support the president? >> i did at that point, yes. >> that's what i ask that because as we know, so many young voters played a part in helping to elect barack obama in 2008 and reelected in 2012.

you are now -- 2012, he was reelected. you are now dismayed with the president? >> in the past two, three years i have definitely become much more aware of political issues in general through my work with -- let's say at that point i wasn't a completely educated voter. as you know many voters can be swayed rather easily with a couple of sentences or something they hear they like. something that has deployed into it as well. >> to this point, editing to answer your question, the degree to which millennials are going to be involved in the process going forward we saw the drop off in 2010 from 2008 among young voters, and that explains in great measure, not entirely but certainly significantly why republicans did so well in the last round of midterms, is young voters and we did not come out when the president was not at the top of the ticket. a lot of young voters have also

supported the president now also incredibly disappointed that the world has not changed dramatically because he was president. and i share their pain. in the words of bill clinton, i feel their pain because i, too, thought we would have a transformational shift. i believe it was possible. the problem with god is that shift and change happens incrementally in the system very slowly. you do not get immediate results. if young people are expecting that from one round of elections on one candidate, they are going to be disappointed. that's both a problem and a challenge for people to say, okay, we've got to be then this for the long haul. and to his credit, the president from day one as a candidate in 2007 said this is not about me. it's about you. i cannot do this.

we have to do this together. yes, we can, not yes, i can. that will be the question. will millennials adopt that view? we have to do this ourselves and not rely on our elected? i don't know. >> i can't fault millennials or any age group for being disappointed, disillusioned and dismayed. the dysfunction going on in washington, d.c. is depressing i think for everybody. you've got a congress that can work with each other. you've got a president i can work with congress. the bottom line is that very little that affects our lives in a positive way is being done in, anti-american people perceive it and i think itself even more by people of your age group, not to mention the unemployment, people in your age group. when you voted three years ago you probably had two more years of college left. now you're getting close to needing a job. i would be a dismayed voter, t

too. >> as a republican i would like to say that old saying, to be young and not be liberal, to be without hard, to be older and not to be considered, but that doesn't apply here. this goes back to the point i was making, when we first started the panel. there's an economic shift globally right now. with the u.s. losing its status in the world. that's affecting us in the job market, and that's just not because the u.s. is losing its stature because china is coming up. there are technological reason, globalization reasons, and just use a very bad analogy, we we have a national revolution we did the shift from emigrating side to the revolution. we displace a lot of farmworkers. as a matter of fact, vermont

wanted to ban farm machinery to protect jobs. today, we are looking at every summer situation, and you know, everybody thinks washington should have a solution. it's going to be very difficult to find a political solution at this moment if we don't really know where the economy is going and how it's going to shake out. we don't really know. we have technology moving ahead so quickly that it's creating, it's creating, productivity in the workplace without the need. so a lot of people are being displaced, and this is not going to be a solution, it's not a problem will have a solution for immediately. it's going to make it so the pendulum will go back and forth. we will blame republicans just as much as we blame democrats. i see the frustration you're going through is going to be very similar no matter who's in office until this shakes out.

and the guiding hope here is that somebody, like one of these brilliant entrepreneurial minds find a way to make technology work for the less skilled person groups are less skilled person using technology will suddenly have a higher skilled position, and can create jobs in that way. but to look at washington, to blame obama entirely for this, to think that a tax fix is the panacea, it's not. these are difficult challenges for washington and to be difficult to see how either party looks to solve these. >> just one thing. i just want to say one thing about the generational look at this. first of all, the midterm elections in 2010 were as much a result of the failure of unmarried women who had voted at extraordinarily high rate in

2008 do not vote in 2010 as it was your generation. so you are not, your generation, any generation of college age tens not to vote in midterm elections. so activism is a function of community, and when you are mobile, and this is the danger in a comment over here, when we are unconnected to each other, our activism is diffuse and we can't do much as a society. but the thing that is on you all to figure out is how you will integrate the communal aspect of activism where one person has a conversation with another about what's best for the community or the country, and not displace it with your online attachment. because the disconnection that comes with online faux activism of online, signing petition

online, that won't do. that won't do. thank you. [applause] >> i have a short statement. >> please go to a question. we are running out of time. >> i have a question that i'd like david and daniel to enter, and it's a question about, daniel, your comment about americans have fear. americans are scared of this, americans are scared of that. where did that fear come from? who is stoking that fear? i have an idea and it's coming from one side of the political spectrum. no, i don't believe it is coming from both speed you have asked your question. david and dan, go ahead. >> koch. >> hello? check, hello. okay. it's coming from a grassroots

group. people, whether republicans or democrats, have felt the pain of not having a job, not getting rehired after the recession. this is not, this is not something, certain candidates may fare because they think they have a solution and that's fair. if i believe i have a solution and my jobs program for my tax plan is going to solve that, i have every right to speak about that. regardless of what side of the aisle. so i don't, i don't subscribe to the fact that this is being stoked by a party. this is the problem that we are seeing a respective of sociodemographic the very high income every top of the socioeconomic scale is not really feeling this. most other people are. >> let's -- please. >> i agree that the fear is

real, there's no question about it. people are afraid. they were afraid during the cold war that the bombs were about to drop. fear has always been good politics. not necessary good democracy, but good politics. but that fear is, in fact, being coached by a americans for prosperity -- come on, it's a shame of the americans for prosperity from two people whose combined wealth is $80 billion. they are not sending checks out. they are writing checks to consultants, exactly, and they are spending a fortune to impact the electoral -- electoral outcome which benefits their bottom line, it's not creating more jobs, except for consultants. and, in fact, they fear that people have, the loss of jobs is real but it is being inflamed and used as a political weapon,

as a tool, and it is shameful. and if these people had any shame, and they don't because as you saw, one of the koch brothers wrote an editorial saying he presented of being attacked for what he is doing. "the wall street journal" just in this last week, poor man, he presents being attacked. well, he better be willing to be attacked for doing what he has done. and continues to do. because he is put his name out there, he and his brother, and if it doing what they're doing, they better be able to take the heat, because they deserve it. [applause] >> so my question is specifically for ms. hughes. you mentioned the renaissance of women governors in new england over the last couple of years. i come from the state of texas where we are in the

gubernatorial race as rick perry has decided not to run again. the democratic party is running a big, big push to turn the state into a battleground state, essentially a purple state. and their nominee for the executive spot is wendy davis. what deeply or her chances not only of a democrat and a state where a party has not won a statewide election in several several cycles but also a woman in texas? ..

i think that there is a movement which is different than a gubernatorial campaign and that the movement is what is important and what will either help wendy make that case enough to get over or, build something that will help in the future. but i think that there is, there is a shot but there is no doubt that it is very tough but i would say, you know, we'll have to see how much that movement carries. >> thank you. >> don't give up on texas. >> i won't. >> it is changing. and it will change in the near future. in the next four to six years, statewide democrats will be elected in texas again, promise you that.

>> let's see if we get the last two folks up here with questions. ask a quick question over here, direct it if you will to a particular panel member. >> my question is washington has become so hateful and trickling down into our society. when in your crystal ball see the democrats and republicans begin to work together so that we can fix america and, we can have these type of intelligent debates without criticizing and demeaning each other? [laughter] >> who wants to start? >> no? >> politics is, is a pendulum and i think we are on the far edge of uncivil discourse right now in politics and i am an optimist and i do think that the

pendulum will swing back it will be frankly when voters start demanding it. and what i tell people is, you know, get out of your comfort zone. don't just listen to people and speak with people and read people who think just like you. it is okay. you can have a republican friend. you can have a democrat friend. i tell all my gay friend, you know what? you want to get this issue moved? go befriend and old, white, straight male. show them it is not contagious. they will be fine. so i think we all have to do our part by getting out of our comfort zone, engaging with people different than us, celebrating diversity of thought and demanding it from our elected officials. >> the problem is we're accused of recruiting when we do that. that is always the problem, to that point i associate myself completely with what anna said.

we have reach ad low point, you can't go any lower than 5% approval of congress, that is for both parties. most democrats and republicans this little red devil is not my feel about republicans. this is symbol for our friend gooding who is a conference participant. i don't think republicans are deal months. i -- demons. i don't think that conservatives are inherently the enemy. but i will tell you that was a strategy that was put into place by my good friends, former client, newt gingrich, when he came into the house of representatives because he used language and he said language is going to define us. and he said when we take back the house, in order to do this, we can't just defeat democrats, we have to destroy them. and it changed the tone. and newt gingrich's revolution set the bar lowered the bar, for the discourse, the level of

civility that we see right now. whether he is willing to accept responsiblity, it was actually tactically smart because it pole rised things and took a very entrenched democratic house majority, turned it up side down and the republican did win. the problem of the politics of polarization and deemization, they often work and that's, that's why it is hard to say there will be an end to it anytime soon because voters are not outraged by it. >> i would just say, actually nixon was the one that started it. that was the southern strategy. but just, to say when this is going to end, the voters need to feel a little bit better about themselves. and right now, if, we do a lost polling and i see this. this is a trend line that i'm seeing, i'm going to hammer this over and over, but as long as we feel threatened, voters are,

voters are argumentative how to solve it and they will want to protect their little base. that is one thing. i agree with ana. part of it cops from voters. the other thing that troubles me, when i first got to the washington in the late 80s, republicans and democrats used to buy each other drinks at the monocle. today that is so infrequent. one of the factors you see, a lot of congressman are almost ashamed to say i live part time in washington. there is factor that really worked when they did. the whole lugarization concept. back then they worked together. you know why? their wives hung out together. their kids went to school together. they had a social connection. there was social fabric there, that today, if i'm a congressman, i keep my family back in the district and i sleep in my office, you don't have that. you don't have that personal touch to be able to reach across

the aisle, hey, our kids are in this together. let's talk. thank you. [applause] >> i'm sorry. i have to make one quick comment. when you leave the room, please exit by the right door here as opposed to left door. there is crowd of people coming in here for the next session. quickly to the left, i want to make sure you get your question asked. >> my question -- >> you can comment and jump in. >> my question is probably best addressed to miss navarro. i watched everyone of the republican debates in 2012 and almost entirely for their entertainment value. >> did you get therapy after that? >> in 2016 will the republicans allow a panel that will be that entertaining? or is there some method to screen out fringe candidates and book sell officers. >> you know, we live in a country where the constitutional louse anybody who is natural born citizen and over 35 to run. so it is not going to be about,

you know, who we weed out. i mean, can they run? yes. will they have the, will they have the resources to be able to sustain it for a while? that's, that's the question. the rnc has made an effort and is making an effort to try to bring some sanity to the debate process. we shall see if it succeeds. >> last comment from mary. >> i do want to leave you on a positive note, to dan's point, there is an example in washington after group of legislators who do exactly what he described, they are the 20 women in the united states senate. [applause] and, and, we have lodge shun in this country, a budget. we have protections for personal safety because they worked together. so, without holding you a lovely

note to end on. >> let's thank our wonderful panel. [applause] great job. >> this morning air force chief of staff general mark welsh is at the national press club to discuss military budget cuts and the future of the air force. you can see it live starting at 9:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. the upcoming parliamentary

elections in iraq will be the topic of discussion today at the center for strategic and international studies. speakers include the iraqi ambassador to the u.s. live coverage 2:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> i remember on saturday the first conversation i had with a group of people at that table with the two on it, it wasn't about where you're from, what is your school like but it was about ukraine, it was about politics and it was our beliefs on education and religion. i was after that moment, wow, this week is going to be intense but it has been really cool to see the evolution of all of our friendships, all our bonds, from talking about politics, talking about our experiences, what we've learned, who we meet. this is a experience i will never ever forget. >> i've always been real cynical about it. i always thought i could never really go that far no politics

and politics is such a caustic environment, slowly throughout the week and different speakers and people i met chipped away at that opinion and so ingrained in my head, maybe i do want to make a difference and run for something local and stay local in my community because like president obama said yesterday, he told us, don't get cynical, because this nation doesn't really need anymore cynical people. that will not help us relief the problems we have. >> one of the things, i know that gets brought up about our generation is our social media. we're able to express our opinions very easily. we can send a tweet what we think. i think that starts conversations and we like to talk a lot. so there is conversation, social media and we just like to get our opinions out there. >> i think this whole week has been about learning. i come from a small town called rotumpka where it is politically

homogenic. there is not many chance of people to get their opinions out without being ridiculed. being here with other delegates to hear other viewpoints and with other human, and not getting shunned for thinking differently. >> high school students across the country discuss the participation in the u.s. senate youth program a week-long government education program held annually in washington, held sunday night at 8:00 on c-span's q&a. >> now a discussion on how middle class jobs are being lost to innovation in the digital revolution. what industry should do to reverse the trend. this is hosted by the group, forward u.s. its founder, former white house advisor, van jones. from aol headquarters in new york city, this is an hour 20 minutes. >> to my left is van jones, who is the president of rebuild the

dream, which is a platform for bottom up people powered innovation to help fix the u.s. economy. he is the co-host of crossfire on cnn with his old friend newt gingrich. and he was formerly the green jobs advisor in the obama white house. he has written two "new york times" best-sellers. mcafee, watch out. next is -- >> gaining on him is all i want to say. >> next is andy mcafee, director of binning tall business at mit sloane school. they are coauthors of the new book, second machine age, in a time of brilliant technologies. a plug for those sign up for a forward membership you will get a book and he is happy to sign them for you. it is actually a really, really interesting book. we have scott murphy, former u.s. representative for new york 20th congressional district and venture capitalist. currently serves as president of

the board of directors of up state ventures association in new york. we ask finally in the empty chair who is on his way from laguardia airport, unfortunately there was some wind apparently, i lost my one and only scarf. really happy about that. andrew rasiej, personal democracy media. chairman of the new york tech meet-up. he will be rushing in at some point in the middle of the panel. so, now on to the panel and we're really talking about this question, what is the future of the middle class and american dream. we have to look back to see how did we get where we are. we'll start with andy to show us a few slides to give us data what is actually happening and move to other panelists. the way i think about it, if you look at last 50 years and rising inequality and lower mobility, there are three main factors you

can talk about. there is globalization, technology and public process and different opinions on the relative weight of those things. so start with andy. >> thank you, joe. thank you all for coming out tonight. i note -- what. i think i'm on? am i on? >> no. >> no. i have a little red light on my microphone. >> need a green light. >> we'll pass the mic. there we go. joe, thank you for having us tonight. there are always a lot of things to do in new york city. so on any given evening, thank you all for coming out tonight. as my title flight says i want to kick off by sharing a bunch of data about the u.s. economy and the workforce over the past chunk of time. the reason to do this, not because i think all of us are as big a data geek as i am but there is a huge amount of rhetoric going on and way too

much of not enough evidence and not enough facts. the story i want to try to tell is of a chars dickens moment in our economic history where it is simultaneously the best of times and the worst of types. in some ways. let me try to make that case with data. so i guess, click. all right. that big slow moving line in the middle is u.s. gdp and the reason it doesn't move around a lot it is such a big number, that it doesn't bounce around a lot year to year. it takes shows shallow divots during recessions. the most recent divot was great recession which was still pretty darn bad. you see for example, it really tanked, both the green and the blue lines there. they rebounded quickly in a way. u.s. corporates in a minute,

they are at an all-time high, whether you measure them in absolute returns or percent of gdp. bravo, we like profits. that is great. the green line is u.s. investment in gear and equipment and software. it also rebounded very quickly in a very healthy way. the u.s. corporate appetite for the that the industry represented by forward dot u.s. make, is bottomless, around keeps on growing. great, we like investment as well. click. what we don't like is the red line here which is the employment to population ratio. in other words the percentage of working age americans who have worked. that line cratered during the great recession and it has flat line ever since. there is no rebound visible at all. every month when the bureau of labor statistics puts out its numbers, this is the one i look at, this is like an ekg of a dead person. it is not going anywhere month

after month. it is at a lower lower than it has been about 30 years before women entered the u.s. workforce. that is the bads news. i can not tell a happy story about that red line there. i promised awe good news bad news story about the economy. this next slide violates that pledge, click. because i can't tell a good story what we're seeing here. this is job growth in the country, decade by decade for the entire post-world war ii history. you notice one of these lines is not like the others. the one at the bottom is the decade we just lived through, the 2000s. you notice even before the great recession job growth was really anemic compared to previous decades where we have data. it was so bad at end of the decade, fewer americans, not in percentage terms, in absolute terps, there were fewer americans working at the end of the decade than the beginning of decade. yuck, i can't tell a happy story about that data earlier. before i put that next slide up,

i need to make one thing really, really clear to everybody. i'm a capitalist. i like our system of private enterprise and entrepreneurship. bravo, i like that stuff. the reason i need to say that in advance i'm about to put up a slide about capital versus labor. when i do that, everyone expects me to wearing a che t-shirt even though i'm not. click. >> he rips open -- >> borrow one of joe's t-shirts. it will not have che on it. all i want to say. this the old friend corporate profit expressed as percent of gdp, again higher than it ever has been on a really healthy trajectory. that divot for the great recession was very sharp. it was also, very, very short. look how quickly profits came rebounding back. again we kind of like that. the red line there is total amount of gdp that gets paid out in wages to all americans every year. and you notice that those blue and red lines were doing a

dance, just back and fourth for most of the postwar history. then since about the turn of the century that red line has been cratering, really, really heading south. what is all the more amazing to me, that red line includes the wages paid to some categories of superstar like ceos and other top managers professional athletes and folks like that. if you took their wages out of that red line it, would be heading south even more quickly than it is. a very, very clear good news-bad news picture of the economy. and click. and this is a story about what's been happening to people at different levels of education over the past several decades. if you have a college education or above, your real wages have been an upward trajectory and classically, the more education, the more training you have, the better your wage trajectory is. the problem here that those bottom three lines represent all american workers with less than a college degree, less than a

full college education. that is, those real wages are lower than they were more than 30 years ago. that's not good. the bigger problem, is that those bottom three lines represent somewhere around 60% or more of the american workforce. fewer than 40% of american workers have a college degree. so minority doing better over time and a majority is kind of see then slowly losing ground here. this is what the superstar economy is yielding us. this is not the graph of 1%. this is a 1% of the 1%. this is the top .01% of earners, how much of national income they're taking home each year. in the postwar era we have paired of relative equality in the economy and in recent decades that is racing upwards. there is no arguing that we're heading into more of a winner-take-all, more of a super

star economy. do i have one more slide, click? yes i do. here is the last one i got. this is line my colleague, my coauthor eric and i call the great decoupling of u.s. economy. in other words it used to be the case, four things we care a great deal about were all going up in lockstep and the four things are output, gdp per capita, productivity, job, job growth and wages. all four of those are great. no economists will argue that you want more of all of those all the time. great news for several decades after the war we had exactly that. the four of them were going up basically in lockstep. recent years, again you see this best of times, worst of times pattern kicking in where the two lines related to productivity and output have essentially continued their nice upward trajectory. and the lines related to first of all wage growth is the green line. and then job growth is the red line. and you see that they have leveled off and in some cases even changed direction.

the average median american household now takes home less than they did in the 1990s. i can't tell a happy story about that. so i find myself simultaneously really encouraged by some economic statistics, those related to you'd put and finding some real challenges in the ones related to jobs and wages. all right, that is the end of data inquiry. thanks for bearing with me. >> so when you think about these three factors, globalization, technology and policy, where do you weight those things? >> as, i'm a technology scholar so my answer will be really unsurprising. the smoking gun here is technological progress. the globalization is prime culprit and easy victim in a lot of ways. most careful research came out said it is not actually what is going on. there is great work published in the last year by people who are not technology geeks like i am. they're kind of labor economists or standard economists and they

come to the same conclusion. when you look at patterns over the past 30, 35 years and you look at capital versus labor or look at hollowing out and polarization and problems of the middle class, the prime culprit is technological progress. it the fact computers, ai, robots and digital stuff now can do stuff we used to need classic middle class labor for. that is explanation for a lot of trend i'm showing here. >> you argue in your book -- very good least scaled things like mowing lawn and not very good at highest scaled things and very good at complex repeatable tasks like accounting or bank telling and thinks like that. >> if you're a busboy not that you have a high paid job or prestigious job, you have a job that is safe from technology for the foreseeable future. there is no robot anywhere in the world that can do this let alone walk across a room, clear a table without breaking

everything terrifying all of the restaurant patrons. that just doesn't exist. the job that involves lower level, poorly paid, interacting with the physical world, massage therapist, dog groomer, busboy, those are relatively safe. super high-end jobs, data scientist, ceo, tough like that appear to be safe from ought mowtation. it is that big chunk in the middle where technology has been having its greatest effect. what i believe is that technologies effects are about to get bigger but low end high in that mid-range. >> andy, is that your sense going on around the world or speaking about the american middle class specifically? >> i see we're just about ought of time. -- out of time. it's a great question and the recent research is adding up. again pointing the finger pretty clearly at tech progress. there was a nice piece of work that looked at that labor versus

capital graph, blue line versus red at a lost countries around the world, it came to a very clear conclusion it was tech progress. the in countries including in china, india and mexico. i can't tell an outsourcing story about that. >> amount going to wages is going up but dramatically the share of gdp is growing fast heter as a share of, growing middle class in china is different what they have before and not gaining as a share but losing ground to other outputs. >> in particular the ultrawealthy are gaining ground in china quicker. the chinese society is less equal than it was 30 or 40 years ago. >> how does that look what you compare labeled the first machine revolution or first industrial revolution? we see the same trend when you go back? >> yes and no. so, we've seen this movie before a lot of people say. we have the first industrial revolution when steam power came on. we had electrification which was

a big, big deal about a century ago. the pattern from the past there can be a transition period and kind of long and kind of painful for some workers. but then those waves of progress were eventually good news forethe average worker. the optimistic view is wait a little while and we'll see healthy job growth all up and down the ladder. i kind of say, you had 3 1/2 decade and what we're seeing is the opposite of that so i don't take that much comfort in the historical pattern. >> so, van? >> first of all that is awesome. >> can we all start our comments with that. i find that helpful. >> second of all, i want to add a few things in. i think it is a murder mystery. who killed the middle class? who killed the american dream? and -- >> maybe andy. >> that -- >> that is a little harsh. >> and it could in fact be case

that technology is the, is a culprit, but i think there are some come polices. and i want to talk about them. accomplices. markets work really well and we're all for markets and markets work under rules and i think the rules are pretty whacky if you are a middle class working family and they have been whacky or a while. whatever damage is being done by technology is i think accomplices at government policy. even though therefore is big discussion going on about the minimum wage. it is completely arbitrary decision that the minimum wage should be pegged to something called, whenever congress gets around to raising it. it could be pegged to cost of living. if it were pegged to productivity the minimum wage would not be $7 an hour, but $19 an hour. that is policy. that is purely policy political

decision that could have taken some of the bite of this at least arguably. it is purely policy question whether or not you have charter reform where corporations could behave differently than they do right now. right now they have to chase quarterly earnings. they have to pay through the nose for ceo salary and that is pretty much only game they're playing. you could have a different corporate charter that let's stakeholders, not just stockholders have some influence here. there are actual decisions that get made. part of the reason, i think this whole conversation is so important, and why i love your work and historical nature of your work, we live in the united states of amnesia. that's where we live. there is no history beyond the last week for most of us thinking about anything. and so it is almost like the middle class is just sort of like fell out of the constitution. they just, you know, you got

america. you have a middle class. we forget the greatest invention in the world is the middle class. it was invent the here and created and built here not only by the employers where they had a role but also by labor unions you don't even think about anymore, but labor unions used to be a huge, huge deal trying to get employers to behave in particular way. . .

now you have employers big corporations to give big piles of cash but they are not investing. they don't want -- they are american corporations except it comes time to pay taxes and then they live in bermuda. it's this weird thing. you don't see anybody -- i just want to say i agree that technology is doing something really, really terrible. >> wait, wait. >> at least in the short term it feels terrible to a lot of people but i think there are some accounts is that ought to be called out. >> can i stand up as the guy who thinks technology is a good thing? >> i'll stand up with you on that. >> i'm a very big fan. >> so am i. but i'm not a pollyanna. >> there in a.

i don't think it solves things all by itself. i was reading andy's book and that's awesome interesting parallels. van touches on some of this. when we live through the industrial revolution we saw the gilded age. we although these stories of the rockefellers and carnegie, and the era we were living through there with his massive wealth creation and that risk stratification. we also saw public policy can together to rectify some of the or to change that direction. it was very bipartisan. you go down to the museum and you see with a progressive republican era was about. reform -- >> when was the last time you heard of those two words side-by-side? >> but it was, they were driving this. how long is the work week? how long is the labor force? can children go to work? pushing education. you to go to your 10, 12, 14. some of the stuff was pushed any headway for the democrats to

take over and push delivery hinge, social insurance that you saw from fdr, massively progressive taxation and you had a whole panoply of public policy that was directed to some degree to rein in what they saw as excesses. but part of that required her to be a consensus. you had to have a political consensus. but i think we're going through is somewhat similar. we have this technology driving this forward, unbelievable opportunity and it is for whole host of effect, networked, digital, for a lot of reasons you get this mass wealth creation at the top. i don't think we have exactly feet of the public policy things to rein that in and share it more broadly. i think that's a task force and to don't think we've figured it out and we don't have consensus necessary to solving the problem which is what makes it tricky but let me give you one might -- give you my one epiphany. if we lived through that last era and we drove education from something that wasn't accessible unless you are rich to math,

public and required for 10 years, what have we done for 70 years? we haven't really moved that forward. maybe the answer is as simple as two more years before, universal free gay or universal pre-pre-k, or maybe we make a law and pleased in to your 18 to 20. as a society when you see the chart this is the difficult you make so much more wealth we got to motivate ourselves to drive people through the. i said this digital earlier and become look at me with us and people aren't made to go to college. all right maybe that's true but also 50, 60 years ago how many people sitting in this room were not made to go to college because of their ethnic heritage, religious heritage come because of the gender? there are a lot more people to push a lot further if we have the right incentives, the right policy and just the right support. this is what our committee expects. you've got to do this to be part of where we're going, part of

our social contract and we've got to get out there and motivate and work to make that happen. maybe we need to require people to get more education and see where that takes us. >> that sounds like a democrat. >> i've got to jump in with the two reactions. my fellow panelist point out to the immediate reactions to the first is that technology must be bed. no, no, no. the old joke among economists is that technological progress is the only free lunch we believe in. here, here. tried to stop the flow technology or stop this era we're in makes less sense to me than cataloging all the schools and bulldozing all the roads. the worst possible move we can make. technology is growing. this is the best economic news on the planet bar none. the question is about the distribution because it is a economic law that such a but has to benefit equally from the benefits, from the bounty of technology. that law does not exist. the data i was showing was my

attempt to get across the fact that distribution is becoming a thornier issue. i want to agree vigorously with one or both of these guys say which is this is not written in stone. when i show my data you can walk away a little fatalistic and say we are screwed i guess. we are absolutely not. i couldn't agree more with both of you that technology is not destiny. we get to shape our destiny as a society and our interventions and policy changes and choices we can make that will be effective at reversing the course and bringing back some of the stuff. i'm completely with van, a large stable prosperous middle class that is one of the jewels of what america has created over its history. let's polish of that jewel. let's not wait for it to get tarnished. >> one thing i just want to point out is, we talked about inequality from the point of view of the pure numbers and income. the african-american middle class in particular is in real

peril. that's what i'm interested in this conversation. i just want to point out, often we talk about african-americans, we've got a proxy for the poor or proxy for the underclass. there isn't african-american middle class, representatives of which are living in the white house right now, just in case you didn't notice. and that chunk of the middle class can be african-american middle class, i want to point out that african-americans had a strategy after dr. king to get into the middle class and to stay there, and all three pillars of the strategy have been knocked over. very simple strategy. college education, employment mainly in the public sector, their dad was a teacher or postal worker or a firefighter, something like that, and

homeownership. that was it. the homeownership peace for us was huge. so huge you never heard a single african-american athlete when they get their big contract say, i'm going to buy my mom some stocks and bonds. [laughter] not once. i'm going to buy my mom a wide? a house, right? that is a huge deal and most of all, we weren't allowed to own property for her longtime and the middle-class folks of stocks and bonds is like a dimly. we are not going to be a responsible and be in the stock market. we're going to get something solid, homes. all three of those, college is now an affordable, public sector shrinking, and we lost 70% of our wealth, 70%. we are now back to the same wealth level we had when dr. king was killed in three years because of that strategy. especially now i think important

as we think about whether the middle-class goes, you've got some parts that are struggling and don't have another strategy. just wanted to put that out there. >> what some of these guys are saying about, as we see this so-called superstar fact where there was a return on the ability, you have this different thing in a knowledge-based economy where there are so many wages and our you can make that i can pick you can make the -- 10,000 times as productive. is there something inherent in that as you see individual productivity? how we sort of catch up to that. >> this is a great question because the are two very, very different views on what's going on with the superstar chart i showed. one is all but what jonathan said which is you're seeing a meritocracy inaction.

every got a woman wearing a high-tech company that i talked to said, i can play place a high premium on for some really good coders, good engineers. it's not 100 times more than an average one, it's like thousands of times better and i will pay them ridiculous premiums to come work with me. the poaching that goes on is crazy. the people like mark zuckerberg and some of the superstars of silicon valley, they have grated ridiculous amounts of value. that's a meritocracy point of view. the other point of view, and a bit -- it's kind of like up at the top of the earnings change, i pay you a lot of you pay me a lot and we all go home happy. the debate rages about which of those two is going on. as i look at the evidence the clearest answer is oath are pretty clearly going on. there's a lot of merit that explains that 1% but i've seen

some work this is most of the folks at the top of that 1% of the 1% are basically people, they are not onto printers, not innovative but the people running very, very large organizations. how much is that meritocracy? we can argue but that but there's clearly that going on up at the very, very high end. >> this is something -- spent sorry i was a little late. there was only run -- one runway at laguardia. spent one of the things that's interesting can i work as a venture capitalist and there's no doubt there's this question after we pay people to run big companies too much because they're running them and what's the difference you asian? one of the things that is interesting is we are continuing to see in small businesses when you private equity ownership where the guys that own the company are on the board and are very involved day-to-day talking to the leadership.

we are continuing to that same bifurcation indies company where we're pushing ceo pay up dramatically faster than rest of the people and the company what you think speaks to the fact we think there is so meritocracy there that even the people, it's not like lost in the public and open nose the guy got a special deal with ford is which what we talk about politics -- >> so you are paying the people that are involved. because the town is so severe? >> we feel like that differentiation that meritocracy the juicing the company that wins with the excellent ceo is worth so much more than somebody else. maybe it's just ripple down our winner-take-all technology but we say hey, we can get the incremental gain, we're willing to pay up a lot for that even at the early stages of the company. >> look, i know this doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it real hard, but if you're a regular person, this is

just horrible. i think we just have to be honest. normal people aren't sitting here trying to figure out why this is great, even if it is great. i live in d.c. and california but in california have you guys heard of this thing called attacks slashed? coming soon to a town near you. essentially in northern california is a town called oakland, and it's within easy driving distance of silicon valley from a half an hour, 45 minutes. people are making so much money in silicon valley that it feels like silicon valley is basically purchasing oakland. this is weird. usually when some group comes in and they have some income, they

start doing things to make things better for everyone. all, contrary. public transformation is not the good in oakland so google just bought its own buses. so now you're in oakland, you are waiting for a bus. no city bus comes. of google buzz comes by with blacked out windows and wi-fi for the people who were about to get on the google buzz. not you, not your cousin, that anybody who lives there. that's weird. if a quadruple privatized set of games. there's going to be a situation at some point where, my fear, is that silicon valley starts to feel like wall street. it used to be that silicon valley is to be that silicon valley was the proof of the american dream. it was the proof that you put anybody could go in your garage and you could work hard and you

could educate yourself, compete and you could succeed. now rather than it being the proof of the american dream, in some places it looks like it's the killer of the american dream. that in this winner-take-all of economy, these are the people with the robots and their smart phones disrupt everybody. i was happy if they disrupted the music and she because i'm not in the music industry. wonderful. but i thought they're going to stop there. >> when they came for the communists, i wasn't a communist. >> but napster, you go, you know? now they're coming for me, too. i just want to turn the heat up a little bit because i think for ordinary people who are trying to understand this think of all the know this new technological elite that have some of able to disrupt -- i didn't vote for these guys. they disrupt everything they can get their hands on. making a ton of money, riding

around on google buses and they're paying their ceos more than some countries. how is that cool? it's not that cool. >> i want to bring andrew in. i think you've been longing involved in new york politics and as new york has grown as a tech up, i'm trees how you see how it's playing out in new york. >> i want to apologize for not being a woman. we should have a woman on this battle. [cheers and applause] -- panel. but one thing i want to make sure everybody understands is that silicon valley to suburbs it the entire tech committee. there's a lot more going on, and in particular new york weather is a tech renaissance happening, it's a very different culture and one that you would see in silicon valley where the business was primarily to fund the marriage of the silicon chip

to hardware and companies like hp and apple and obvious intel and now google it and basically bit of research on the internet. what's happening in your is where living in the application layer where the real resource is not technology so much as it is the human talent. there's no city in the world that has higher density of human talent than new york or if you look in a city that is high quality human talent you see some sort of tech renaissance happening where people are speaking about building their own app, going on companies, try to take advanced of these technologies which are disruptive but also create a lot of opportunities. the problem i see not just in new york but in other parts of the country and around the world is that the legislative and regulatory environment is not able to keep up with the speed of the way technology is going. but trent is right.

there is an nspg doubled to great infrastructure to satisfy people moving in to d.c. to get to work even if they have a right to the capitalistic model to buy that apartment or to buy that house. so there's a workaround to if we allow all of these workarounds to vintage to happen will have a lot more disruption. the only other thing want to add, sitting on a plane had a chance to read a review but i hadn't read the book because there's a passing book, which just came out, which is -- >> when you're done reading our book, read this one. it'it's awesome. >> the h2b points to be made in that book, and the title of it is capital in the 21st century. the first big argument is you cannot separate economic thinking from political thinking because economist for decades have thought of themselves as scientists are basically just looking at david associate with economics and not looking at the underpinnings of how political theory would affect those economic determinations. the second big point is that when you have, when capital

grows faster than gdp you will start seeing a big separation going richer and poor, and inequality gets worse. >> guess what's going on these days? >> that's what's going on right now. there are all kinds of arguments made that that could be a blip in the screen but country for gdp is growing, capital is also valuable, we are lifting up lots and lots of people into the middle class. 70% of the world population is living in a much higher standard of living than they were 10 or 15 just go. i think the increase of people used to live on 1 dollar a day to $2 a day which sounds like a ridiculous amount of money in the u.s. but it's a 100 increase in your income, in bangladesh or some poor part of the world. two or three meals to the point is that there's an argument to be made that humanity as a whole is much better off now than it's ever been before. so i think it'd we need to be careful not to look at this issue through a straw and

manchester think about this more holistically spent i want to make two points. i really want to underscore something van said. it doesn't matter if what's going on these days is economically rational if it is perceived as unfair. an economist would look at the google buzz and say this is awesome. it's not preventing anybody else from hopping on a bus. it's sitting on carpools, probably reducing total carbon emissions. this is awesome news, if it's perceived, if the perception is out there that this is bending the rules or not for the people of oakland for example, been where in a really, really bad situation. i'm kind of with you, there's a real danger that silicon valley is going to be perceived as the new wall street, the new engine of evil in the economy and that would be a dire outcome. it's incumbent on the tech committee, those of us who are part of the, to engage in conversation and make sure the

perception doesn't head in that a bad direction. to underscore something and are just said, i think one of the most challenging elements of what we are going through is that the technology is changing so quickly that it's really hard for our institutions, for our political decision-making processes to keep up but it's not the fastest moving part of the world under any circumstances but when things are changing this quickly, it's really hard for a lot of our existing organizations and institutions to keep a. the only thing we can do as members of our organizations and society is advocate for the right kind of changes to the way for washington to lead, they are going to follow what we want them to do. >> that's a great transition towards some of the solutions. go to some of the solutions themselves. >> a couple things. one is, in politics i think we have, i think why we've been

telling ourselves and the public, which is that we are the agents of change. there's some campaign about hope and -- you've got a problem, don't worry, we're going to change it. a vote for us, come to protest or whatever. we're going to bring the changes. i think we have to stop saying that. these guys are driving change. the technology guys are driving change the silicon valley and all of this, you know, metaphorical splendor, the technology guys in austin and boston and newark city and elsewhere, chicago. that's what is driving the change. politics has to start saying, look, we're not going to make change. somebody else is doing that. we're going to make change your friend. that's the new job assignment, the change is coming. the 3-d printers are coming. the robots are coming. the smart screens are coming to

you will drive up to mcdonald's, though be a flatscreen can you push a button, it will open, a robot will handle your burger and there's not a human being that touched the thing. that's coming. it's easy to do that. you didn't vote for the. change is coming. how do you make change your friend? i think politicians how to get more humble. at the same time, two things i think are important. number one, i was just in silicon valley yesterday. the level of non-diversity, you mentioned is there not being diverse, the level of non-diversity, i don't if that's even a word, -- >> the level of diversity. >> the level of diversity was bad last night -- [laughter] not to be too technical. it was really shocking to see, first of all, the splendor if

you go on this campus, amazing people, the energy, the creativity. but you just see very large -- that's very, very bad and did that for a couple of reasons. number one, we are wasting genius. there's a genius and african-american community, like you know committees, there's genius in these projects, genius in tension senate and wasting it though we're building industries to be built on genius. that means someone is looking out on some money and some market share. but it also means there's some people are missing out on real opportunities to be part of the economy. i think we've got to focus on that pretty aggressively. to talk about education. i love all this talk about stem and all the stuff. science, technology, engineering and math. if you know the people who came up with this, tell them not to

do that. >> is meth better? how do i go about that speak was still and by itself -- i digress. look, i get the rose, you get the -- i get the apple commute get the -- there is a thorn. but i'm all for all of the impetus now on science and math and that kind of stuff but that is not a job training strategy. that is a long-term play to try to raise long-term. we are in an economic emergency write-in. is a man right here i love to death named hank williams. give this guy a round of applause. one of the great godfather's of technology in the black community here. you should probably be a few more than me. hank williams has a plan to spend a billion dollars getting 100,000 low opportunity young people trained to have jobs in tech. that billion dollars, 10,000

hits a year for 10 years, $10,000 per kid, that billion dollars, half a trillion dollars for the economy. you say to yourself, why don't we just go ahead and do that? look, the public sector can't move fast enough. a billion dollars is not that big a deal in the overall economy. i think the first thing that it is technology is going to be the leader, the rest of us will follow. that's one solution. [applause] >> i think one question to follow on that is one of the andy's charge showed that greater amount of education leads to more income. there was little correlation between education and income. now education has become more important, there's an argument to be made that education which we think of an equalizer. that the biggest determine her

is your parents come what may what you grew up in and education is highly hereditary. you like a silicon valley and you look at the bill and graduated in computer science degrees, and they don't look very diverse. so the question is -- spent they have east asians and south asians. what are you talking about? >> not much of that. know, but so the question is how do we change our system to one that actually can actually take people and find that genius in all parts of society? >> i've got to jump in. education is something i have a passion about everybody in this room is probably passionate about education. but i think there's and argued to be made about the difference between scarcity and abundance. there is an opportunity for a bonus but here's an example. how many hours of the year do

you think him percentage done, do you think schools are actually open? it's about 15%. kids are actually in class about 9% of all the time. >> they have to be home during the summer to pick crops. >> we have a program that make schools and libraries connect to the internet and they're talking trying to funded or defunded but when kids are in school and they have access to unite we figured out it's about 1% of all the time of the you. so let me ask you industry, how many of you would be productive, accessible a good access to the internet 1% of all the time in your life? >> i think i might be more productive actually. [laughter] >> we have to something about information and currency. i think the biggest opportunity, and i don't disagree with van, related to try to accelerate the

amount of education and training that's available to underserved communities in this country. we have a huge problem in the fact whether broadband to wobbly in this country that makes the cost of broadband beyond the reach of most working class people to build bridges great your they want to teach themselves how to participate. 80, $90 a month is beyond the reach of ordinary working-class families. they can't afford it. you have kids holding up laptops outside of libraries trying to pick up wi-fi signals. they're doing their homework on smartphones. they shouldn't be. they should be accessing the internet as best as possible because if they have access they can leapfrog come some degrees break the chains of social act introduced themselves. we don't have enough teachers to teach stay, to the kids that hank wants. that's another problem. the other thing is we will to humanity's out our window and forget about how important humanities are in people's lives. ..

and are blocking information access. it is worse than that. now i will give you a different scenario which is, name a company, an organization or an