were back in 2010. one of the striking things to me in this list as many of you know, a new field for me, was how undeveloped all three of the areas we focused on really were prevention, containment and still response and i appreciate frank's friends comment and accommodation on our work on prevention. i thought that was the important first place to start in a soap because richard has suggested a silly place we need to invest a tremendous amount of time, money and thought into raising the level of prevention everywhere. not just in the arctic, but the deepwater and the ultra- deepwater. i was stunned frankly at the primitive level is still response technologies that the u.s. government had to use mvp

was able to call on. it had advanced almost not at all since exxon valdez and i'm actually delighted to hear from fran who knows more about this than i do about the intensive research effort that are going on. the national research council released tomorrow and the agenda of four additional research that they're apparently going to publish, which will lay out for all of us do things we need to learn and the things that need to be developed. i was amazed how little work was going on at the time i've macondo. it is little knowncoming to the department of interior is still response testing facility in new jersey in our stead. when i visited in 2011, i asked the people who work there but the extent of its use was by come knees in the industry and the answer was they frequently felt like the maytag repairman for those of you old enough to remember those commercials because in fact, they were not

using the facility to test is still response technologies. i think that is changing, but i think that is changing too slowly. so i think the principal task, if the q-quebec to your question, david, for the government regulator to follow is are we truly ready, do we have regulations in place that are sufficiently tailored to the arctic on prevention? two we have adequate containment mechanisms to deal with a blowout come in very different kinds of challenges than he had in deepwater because it's a shallow water. the pressures are less than so forth, but still challenges. the biggest challenge in the one are focused in on partially in this discussion is still response. given challenging conditions of the arctic, can we do that? can the company began to well up to that? and if they can't, then it is

hard to imagine a government lawsuit to go forward. >> let's talk about the deepwater a little bit. obviously you were also closely involved in that. how much progress have we made a deepwater horizon? at the blowout preventers better? is the response better? what about this prevention rather than response? are we better preventing accidents now that we were four years ago? >> we are significantly better preventing accidents than we were before. we have a much to enhance set of regulations, which even that was done in a hurry up faction really incorporated a lot of learning for the industry and government that frankly should have been incorporated years, if not decades before. so i think we are in a much better place, but i recognize we will never reduce the risk is

zero. the challenge is to not rely on the enhance its implemented in 2010 but to keep moving forward and figure out how to keep pace with the industries and the advanced vents are able to keep pace. the interior supposed to come out with a new law prevents her draft will sometime in the next few months. i think that will pick up on many of the deficiencies of the current regulations that exist. and this is the most important point that i want to make. this has to be the subject of continuing discussion, review and activity. otherwise we'll fall back into complacent being overconfident that everyone was experiencing just before macondo. >> if i could follow-up on that, this week doi is hosting workshops at the industry to

talk about a con that that interior is floating of an information -- voluntary information system of near misses being communicated to interior. why is this important just as a follow-up of how i'd think frankly the department is continuing the dialogue? the notion of knowing more about near misses is closely tied to what richard is talking about earlier, which is what can you be constantly learning about your business practice, about your subcontractors and contractors, but the safety management and the safety culture of your organization? and as a result of learning from near miss this, how can within a company in within the industry, do a better job of not because of regulation really, but because of learning and enhancing from your experience,

your business practices, i think it is a fabulous thing. in some countries, including norway, the information is required by their federal government in a way to really stimulate this dialogue not only within the industry, but between the industry and regulator about constantly learning from mistakes because it is the human element and it is a constant struggle to reduce the risk within the systems that currently exists. so i've been told that the industry doesn't really like what interiors is proposing. it's going to be another push pull between is this unfair? again, as i understand it, voluntary. >> and its anonymous. >> and its anonymous. it is sort of like what's not to like. human beings are always a little reluctant to make changes, right? which maybe is part of the problem.

i only offer that as an example of the interior is continuing the conversation about what can be done differently in other about prevention and i think the emphasis on prevention has always got to be where we put our money as opposed to the spillovers bonds. not to say we don't need to do more research and spill response are are training a position of. don't get me wrong, but that will never be the answer. the answer is prevention and risk reduction. >> come back to what the interior is doing. it is voluntary and anonymous and it's based on a program going on for many, many years within the airline and is eerie and the faa to capture near misses from that industry where is generally deemed to have been a pretty effective program. bringing in learning and farming the regulator in the industry about things that are happening in your own backyard. it is going to take some time to

adapt it to the oil and gas industry, but it certainly worth doing and it's an opportunity to learn from another high-risk industry that has over decades learned to manage those risks pretty effectively for all of us. i want to come back to some of these other points that were made. it echoes what chris said at the beginning. this is never going to be over. this is a constantly evolving landscape in terms of the risks and the opportunities. and as for an aye were just talking, i was thinking about what chris said earlier. i was thinking about this symposium, take us back in time. 10 years ago, i can reginald wouldn't have been a fixture of it because they were very few companies doing it. arctic would've hardly been a fixture because the alaska sales had happened in the 80s and wells were drilled in the 90s and the companies pretty much went away. i might've been about deepwater,

shallow water, sending us in 10 years before then deepwater would've hardly been on the horizon. so here we are today talking about all three of them and that just says something very important about the resource, the nature of this industry, about what this industry does and how they pursue opportunities globally. first and foremost to me is these things are all going to happen. the deepwater will continue. the unconventional school continue in the united states very act ugly, internationally, probably less actively because of less well developed service sector and regulatory environment and infrastructure. but it will grow. and certainly internationally, and some extent the arctic is going to happen and probably in the u.s. to some extent, greater arctic development is going to have been. some of these things are going to happen and we need to be

conscious of it and accepted the regulatory environment needs to continue to evolve and stay ahead of the challenges. >> them a focus on the international peace. you may have answered this question to the first panel, but you look at the countries around the world getting into deepwater development, whether it's deepwater gas and the symbols of the mozambique and tanzania, deepwater oil in kenya, five. outcome of sierra leone. governments that have not had such experience with expiration, they haven't had the governments experience. so what do you advise government like that to do to make sure that they can manage their end of the business? whether it is something more performance-based than prescribed it, whether they get out and help to ralph been reached through. but if they came to you and that, how do we make sure we prevent accidents, what would you advise them to do quick

>> they need to do several things. they obviously need to develop a regulatory structure and regulatory system status can stand with their their society and their culture. in alien can be grafted onto a particular governmental system and work. or without experience, regulatory structure does you no good. so once he figured out what the regulatory structures that make sense, given societal and political cultural norms in your country, you are going to need to get expert help at the outset to train your people and if development is on the, stuart directly with your people to help do the actual day-to-day tasks of regulating. the challenge here is that the appetite for revenues from oil and gas development is enormous and their frito-lay, and almost

every case in the country getting into the field will exceed the regulatory capacity of a country and that spells danger. i think which regulatory system with the performance-based or prescriptive, which is the one we have predominately matters less than when you really understand you have to constrain the appetite and be realistic about the risks you are facing and that's incredibly hard to do when you've got enormous revenue prize staring you in the face. >> indeed. a few examples. in my industry days, we were getting into some deepwater activities and an african nation and it was new to deepwater and that country and as we were looking at how to work with state oil company in the state

on future developments, i was actually very impressed because the environment -- i will call it the regulatory environment that appeared to be in place, looks to be -- looks like they were taking a pretty high road in terms of environmental standards that they were going to demand a gas solution that flaring would not be allowed. there were a lot of aspects of the regulatory environment that were in place prior to expiration drilling that i thought this is going to be good. this is going to demand high performing companies to be just that it is going to make sure that any developments done there are done properly. the first big development in the first time the company said we can't actually get a gas solution in place in time, we will have to flayer for a while in the regulation started to fall and be drafted and everything kind of -- it didn't

all fall apart, but a decade later, significant development in the deepwater offshore of this country and this environmental highroad that i thought they were taking really hasn't come to pass. and so at least that country behaved very pragmatically, react to the economic opportunity morcally, react to the economic opportunity more so than the difficult operational environmental challenges and shows an expedient solution, which by the way is not that different than what happened in this country are the 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000 as the industry moved off into the deepwater and the real challenge is not to do that as we continue to deepwater development and move into arctic development and the challenge us that if this country is that balance elsewhere in the world, where the pragmatic desire to find government revenues is going to

outweigh these real serious considerations. >> i agree completely with my colleagues. the only thing i would add to it as if i were giving advice to a government just launching in this arena, i would encourage them to find a way to build economic incentives into risk reduction. in other words, in whatever tax regime or regulatory regimes or permitting regime, somehow building into that regime a business case that would encourage companies or increase the penalties, however you want to put it a b+ or negative, but economic incentives to do risk reduction. that was one of the points you're trying to get out with the deepwater worries in postal commission reportedly suggested increasing liability requirements, which haven't been

increased since it was past many, many years ago. you have changed the balance so the internal calculation by the company puts a higher premium on avoiding a disaster. >> and the shale gas case, which easiness in taxis. sometimes some of the season the licenses first granted to go to the regulators so they can start to build the regulatory capacity for the drilling takes off to catch up or trying to keep up with the growth industry. richard, i want to ask you we had a discussion this morning about the economics of deepwater versus onshore, offshore. you've had the chance to see this question from all perspectives. do you have any thoughts you want to contribute on that? >> i do. a lot of great points are made in that panel. i will add a little bit to it. it actually comes back to some of the premises that were laid out in a couple of paragraphs

written about this section and the opening question, do we need to deepwater quakes do we need the arctic given to conventional? a starting point i sometimes like to start the obvious and maybe that's because i'm in academia and get away with it. i think it actually helps. we don't need it because global reserves of around a trillion barrels were some 50 times global production and so there's plenty of mall cools out there. the problem is we do need to because the molecules are the wrong molecules in the wrong geography for what we are doing. and so, we will continue to do things like deepwater and unconventional and arctic and we will do them and now i'm speaking as an industry person, we will do that not because we are pushed there by regulators earlier driven there by some

outside force. the company will go to these places because there's an opportunity in the industry has 100 plus years of making these opportunities work. i am a believer in the theory of oil and gas exploration and development for those of you who don't know, willie sutton was a famous bank robber in the 1950s and when he was asked, whitey rob banks? he said because that is where the money is. why do oil companies go to deepwater? why are they doing some conventional as hard as it is? because that's where the oil is. in reality, deepwater is every bit as the track of economically as the unconventional spirit in many measures, it is far track suit. it is big developments, multibillion dollar's developments that will live for decades and that is a huge thing

to a major international oil company that looks at infrastructure and longevity and capital efficiency. by many measures, the deepwater looks a lot better than some of the other conventional spirit arctic is hard to say because there isn't a track record and development projects in the arctic to point to say we know about what the cost might be because we've done many others. i think right now it is fair to say companies perceive arctic development should be as a track to as deepwater or unconventional or anything else for even nine minus number of companies pursuing the art equipment be doing them. the economics are there for all of these things and they will be there in the companies will pursue them for these reasons. >> we want to remind folks are happy to take questions from the audience. if you have occurred, reeser

hand will look at a question for you. i want to ask about the impact of climate change. i will start with you, but others can comment. the ice melts in the arctic, does that change how you think about safeties, does that change how you think about spill response? does it change how you think about emissions from the air, which were covered with ice, which will be uncovered? what to think about those questions? >> it changes many things and to follow-up on richard, maybe i will state the obvious as well. maybe just to set the context, climate change is happening in the arctic faster than anyplace else on earth. so somewhere around four degrees increase in alaska means that spring is coming earlier, fall is happening later in the sea

ice road we are talking about the extent been 50% last inexperience and 75% less than volume. i mean, talk about a seachange. this this is major. but it's permafrost thawing. it's coastal erosion. it is increased storm activity. in the past if you're lucky enough to bury street area, the beaufort, shut cheek, when there was more ice, ice acted kind of like a blanket on top of the ocean. so when really bad hurricane wind force winds in the winter would rip across the arctic, it would blow across the ice. but now, with less ice in open water commute a bigger waves, were pounding on the shorter with permafrost died, you get the increased on the dignity,

the ways we're losing coastline. where they been catalina has to move, news talk is talking about moving because their infrastructure is collapsing into the sea. it was mentioned in the former panel that change is that the oil industry does work. amidst the ice froze to rely on to get to billing platforms that can no longer rely on because they're just not safe anymore. or is on a period of time. i mean, everything is changing. so yes, it creates opportunity in the sense that access has increased. access is increasing not just in terms of being able to potentially access oil and gas, but for shipping and shipping is increasing dramatically. to her ships, oil ships, primarily over the sea which come in the area north of russia as opposed zero the northwest

passage, which is the region above painting the come of the northern route opening up. i was in finland last week. if you are in the european arctic and having discussions like this, it feels very imminent. it feels very real. the koreans are building ships. the chinese are building ships. it is happening and gas because climate change is changing everybody's notion of what is possible, it is definitely changing the economics of at least the possible economics associated with development air. so it is hard to answer your question in terms of exactly how fast or exactly who the winners and losers will be because it is such a dynamic experience for those of us who live there for people who don't live there, but want to do business there. all i can say is that the

president is not what the past was in the future is not what the president is today. so you can pick your projections about how rapidly things will continue to change. but the reality is how we build ports and docs in airports and buildings changing right now because permafrost thaw in of how much access they will be changing right now because there's more than there was before. and there will be more in the future. so it's dynamic, very dynamic. >> picking up on friend's point of dynamism, you would think that the climate change she's describing in the melting going on that will extend the drilling season at least potentially. on the other hand you have lots of collateral complications being caused because of competing uses, increased tourism, increase commercial activity for shipping. to the extent that companies look for stable environments to plan in the future because these

projects take many years, but dynamism isn't as attractive because things aren't such a rapid change mode and will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. >> that's great. but me ask a question about international standards. secretary salazar developed a platform for international standards and i think it migrated a bit to national standards for the arctic region. given differences in ice cover in geology, to international standards make sense? to come up with some pain worthwhile and usable? >> one of the things we discovered is to try to internationalize their efforts based on the recognition that we are shared by many different countries. countries are very proud and jealous of their regulatory regimes. and so, it is a challenge to

develop meaningful international standards that will be fine in any meaningful way. i still think international efforts are extremely important, extremely meaningful. we learned a lot as they were developing our new regulations from over 80 different countries that have different regulatory regimes from the u.k., from the norwegians, from the australians, from others. and so i think the continuation of those kinds of interchanges and exchanges are extremely valuable and i think setting a fine international standards is a worthwhile project. the people should not underestimate the challenges because they think they are very, very substantial. >> three quick points. first off the deepwater as an oil spill commission of which i served to focus primarily on the gulf of mexico. but we did have a section with recommendations regarding the arctic and one of our recommendations was that the night they should take a

leadership role in developing international standard. i don't think we used the language of mandatory, but i don't only recall. i think the point was to stimulate discussion of the arctic nations about how you would reduce risk and increase the opportunity for best practices to be shared and reship is supposed to reach down in that region. the arctic council, which is the entity that exists among the eight arctic nations and has existed since the 1990s as a forum for discussion about the environment, about sustainable development, a number of years ago that arctic council task force on international oil and gas drilling in the to produce a document that laid out drilling standards. again, that was not intended to be a regulatory, but rather an

instructive sort of exercise of saying to each of the eight are the nations, as you look at your own regulatory regimes, how do they measure up again this approach, which basically says there should be a place where because of its vulnerability and special environment and indigenous people who live their rely upon the natural resources. how do you measure up? third point. we are talking this morning largely about the u.s. arctic or alaska, the beaufort, chart sheet, but it's really important to say this. the arctic is not the same everyplace. it is to magically different in finland and russia and canada, both understand point of how much i service, from the stand point of whether there is permafrost and whether the governments really have bilateral agreements with their

neighbors. i mean, russia and norway have developed 2020 from which really goes into another detailed out how they will do oil and gas development in the barents region. so there's a lot going on in the art. but let's remember that there's some very unique aspects in each region in the art take that would speak to very different kind of regulatory requirements in terms of the specifics of development and drilling and =tranfour and there's some very significant difference this from the standpoint of culture and sophistication with regard to development. most of the other technicians actually think of themselves as arctic nations. unlike the united states come or frankly most people in the united states, if you ask them, korean or nation? they probably would give you a puzzled look because we don't think of ourselves that way. and then say no. if you are in finland or you're in russia, the arctic is part of

their persona. they relate to it. they care about it. they do research. .. >> a one to add to this that there's a huge and opportunity for government, governments and industry to be working together constructively.

they both stand to gain quite a lot. the industry's enormous talents and capabilities and money than to inform on what the solutions might look like. governments bring the national interest. industry would prefer a principal. industry would generally referred that those being managed internationally and there be some uniformity. companies have said they would favor costs to carbon that would impact their business and would like to see that happening as broadly as possible. in that regard them tried to build that into the screen projects, whether it's a carbon tax, cap and trade, or something else, the industry generally would like to see that happen.

at the same time the industry can be a valuable source of information on how to adopt the big framework to local needs whether it be geologically and frustration. so there is an opportunity to work together and craft of right kind of mobile standards with the local necessary to tell. >> a great question from the audience. the question about and what should the agenda of the. safety at sea, the elected black carbon. the u.s. we will could it turned be the chair of the arctic council present. if you are going to make a list of collaborative or cooperative

efforts to be prioritized with a magic wand and dictate the agenda. >> the three basics, containment, and response. we'll agree the emphasis is on prevention. get more of have prospective in terms of the safety and prevention. i don't think we have to get lindenhurst. that would be a major step forward. >> to think and will put my

research commissioned hat on. there are many topics and think the arctic council. with regard the science specifically and would put my money on observing. the arctic is a very big space. as witness to have petitioned for. but we don't and a half is a sophisticated network of observations. this goes way beyond ice cover.

watterson, what is happening with ocean ahead and observing networks that have not only the opportunity for the private sector and in doing research for their purposes, the government agencies he and in academic institutions that would take us

way beyond where we are now and really give us more bang for the buck. hemline adjustment, at the back table you will see an opportunity be to pick up the puck. new honda diaz and an en and really try to focus. >> and i think -- i completely agree. from the world i've lived in when sen of would be welcome would be this integrated cross,

to bring together the specific restrictions be ended the welcome because it would provide half been hidden -- a lot to give voice to a concern. there is an all to panera and. navy put all of money into alternatives and did a be working on the way to do the deep water.

how do you respond to concerns a tap? is a viable- >> not turn his head. have met with a number he have environmental organizations in nine had just have a gut level and native reaction and the hydrocarbons. the question that there were unable to answer he in is what we do now hands. alternatives are great. tomorrow night what to do and a never get a satisfying answer her. i think some aspiration who-to change the mix of energy use, shifting from-high. i think that's something to be aspired to and something and think we are pursuing. the notion of we can't shut down

now, tomorrow, our next year the additional exploration or production of hydrocarbons. since the. >> it's an important question. i guess we all ought to ask ourselves what role we personally play in driving demand head for wearing gas. we like rouses long, hot water not. so unless there is some radical discovery in the near term from the standpoint of generating electricity we have options, hydroelectric, wind. from the standpoint of driving our cars meristem not apply where i think anybody feels as though there's a viable alternative in the near term to pumping more oil and the ground. where it comes from does matter love put whatever.

there are very special places some in the arctic that should not be geraldton. there are areas of particularly high biological diversity they're absolutely essential to a specific andrews migratory routes in aware walrus' feed. i think a more strategic approach a new. it under some places the should be off-limits? yes. realistically can we put everything off-limits? know who. so new it will be for me or anyone else on this panel to decide, frankly, which of those places get walled off, but i ion 9n and -- they used to do aerial wide and leasing and which would say any place in these huge blocks from of area off the coast of alaska could be open

will. other taking a much more strategic approach and saying there are some areas that we don't know enough about khnum woman -- i think as a realist that seems to me to be a more productively for us to engage in new and hint in that discussion will. meanwhile, as a nation and one has a species we should be investing in their research from that allows us to develop more quickly the alternatives that would allow us the luxury of making a decision that we are simply not going to drill at all in places like the arctic. we are not there yet. >> if the price of entry into the special place is really reflected in me the potential cost of doing something there you would find that the company's would not be interested in going because they would make the judgment that there may actually be some resource there, but it's just not worth it.

i'm not going to worry about it, go there, do that. so by getting that right you can steer companies away from the special places. i think as far as future energy goes, the world certainly has to change. the world is changing fairly rapidly, and there are a lot of very interesting technologies that are probably going to change the world in ways that we don't really have the ability to think about that today and understand, but it will happen and it will happen over the coming decades. by 2015 the world where look a lot different than it does today in terms of our energy mix, where we are getting it, how we're using it, but we will have to get there in a rational way. oil and natural gas a just going to be a big part of it. the conventional energy industries will be a big part of it. i think something that is important is we should not necessarily look to the

conventional industry to lead. maybe it will. maybe it will change their business. maybe there will adopted, the discovers and temple mentors or maybe they won't and somebody else will. to sit back and look get shell and exxon and bp and chevron andy and i and say you have to take us there is a little misguided. let them do what they are good that and do it as efficiently as possible and incentive new energy he industries to develop and create technologies to take us into the next century. >> terrific. we have come to the end of our time. we have looked at the major questions we set out to and this seems like the hon conventional bone is not going to eliminate the need for exploration of the frontier areas. it seems like we have made a

great deal of progress. constant vigilance is required and there is more to go. fingerboards let me thank all of you for coming today. let me thank our panelists for your service and for your comments today. until the next event had thank you for coming. [applause] >> book tv in primetime on c-span2. exploring america. we start at 8:00 eastern. author of a book

>> so of all the independent scientists around the world combined into about 40 countries and they all agree whether they are again store for, it does not matter, they all agree it was released long before the science was ready based on economic interests and political interest. and the policies i don't agree are irrelevant. mass of collateral damage, hundreds of thousands of mutations up and down dna, far more than conventional breeding, far more. and they don't evaluate. it's an independent scientist after was on the market and found the gene that was normally silent was switched on, and that produces analogy. you may have an allergic reaction, someone you know may die.

the process of genetic engineering created a switch on of the dormant gene. you know, here are the organizations, who is, world food safety authority, american medical association, no problem with gm models. are all of these part of a conspiracy? that china's -- if that is enough, here are a bunch of other organizations, and these are not organizations with some scientific sounding name the real medical and protective organizations. in europe which is very anti gm know, australia, all of the world. the epa. they say would not pose an unreasonable risk to human health and environment. i could come up with dozens of

these. the australian and new zealand food safety, identified no safety concerns for any of the foods. is this reasonable? something that is a poison. this is just fear mongering. all of these organizations are just ignoring it. >> you can see all of that debate on genetically modified through tonight on our companion or at it:00 eastern here on c-span2 at 8:00 this book tv and prime time tonight looking american explorers. over on c-span three, american history to be focusing on the confederacy in the civil war. >> we are seeing right now or we are inviting competition and capabilities more and more into our environment. some technologists disagree, but i personally consider the smart phones that we all carry around with us or the 70 percent of the american population carries

around to be a trademark example we are becoming human censors because we're all carrying around an extremely powerful computer a pocket, but it also takes the form of different sensors that exist in the physical world around us, radiofrequency identification readers that we pass underneath when we access the new jersey turnpike. takes the form of whether sensors. certainly surveillance and cameron's that collect data and send it somewhere else. this is all part of the internet, basically imbedding of computers and our real world. >> the deputy editor of the futures magazine on all world that anticipates your remove saddam night at 10:00 eastern and some and added 9:00 and on line our book club selection, read the book and join in the discussion at booktv.org. live sunday, may 4th, look for our next in-depth guest, former

gang member turned author and poet. his work includes the award winning book on gang life and his 2011 release it calls you back. book tv every weekend on c-span2 >> allegations and insinuations that i knew about the planning and the watergate break-in and that i was involved in an extensive plot that covered about. the house judiciary committee is now investigating these charges. on march 6th i ordered all materials that i had previously furnished to the special prosecutor turned over to the committee. these included tape recordings of 19 presidential conversations and more than 700 documents and private white house files. on april 11th the judiciary committee issued a subpoena for 42 additional tapes of conversations which it contended

were necessary for its investigation. i agreed to respond to the subpoena. >> forty years ago on april 209th president nixon responded to a house judiciary committee subpoena for additional watergate tapes. his response plus reflections from former "washington post" journalist carl bernstein sunday night at 8:00 eastern, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span three. >> next in a conversation about whistle-blowers and national security. we will hear from several prominent whistle-blowers. from the university of southern california this is two hours and ten minutes. >> to my left, president of rebuild the tree which is a platform from bottom up. he is also on cnn.

and he was formerly the green jobs adviser in the obama white house and has written to new york times bestsellers. next is -- >> that's all i want to say. >> next is the associate director of the center for digital business. he and eric are co-authors of the new but the second machine age and a time of technology. those who sign up for, you will get a book. happened assignment for you. it is actually a really interesting book. and we have scott murphy, a former u.s. representative from new york's 20th congressional district and a venture capitalist. the president of the board of directors of the upstate ranchers' association of new york. finally in the empty chair.

for some of the there was some wind apparently. i lost my one and only scarf. really happy about that. the president of purple democracy media, chairman of the near. so he will be rushing in at some point in the middle of the panel. so you were really talking about this question of what is the future of the middle-class. in order to have that conversation we have to look back a little bit. how did we get to where we are? we will start with andy. kind of give us some data on what is actually happening and then we will move to other panelists. the more i think about that, if you look at the last 50 years and rising inequality in lower mobility, there are three main factors you can talk about, globalization, technology and technological progress.

kind of different opinions about the relative weight of those things. we will start within the. >> i think iman. i have a little red light on my microphone. >> we are going to pass the mike there we go. now we're in business. thank you for having as. there are always a lot of things to do in new york city. thank you all for coming in tonight. as my title slide says to my want to kick off by sharing a bunch of data about the u.s. economy and the work force of the past the time. the reason to do this is not because i think all of us are as big a deal is i am but because there's a huge amount of rhetoric and way too much of it and not enough evidence, not in a fact. and just want to ground our discussion tonight in some of the recent evidence. the story of want to try to tell

is of a charles dickens moment in our economic history where it simultaneously is the best of times and the worst times in some ways. let me try to make that case the data. i guess all right. that big slow-moving line in the middle is u.s. gdp. the reason it does not move around a lot is it is just such a big number that it does not bounce around a lot year to year takes those shallow david stern recession. you see that most recent did it was the great recession which was still pretty darn bad. you see, for example, it really tanked of the green and the blue lines there. but both the green in the blue lines rebounded very, very quickly in a very healthy way. the blue lines of u.s. corporate profits which we will see again in a minute. they are at an all-time high. whether you measure them in absolute terms are as a percent of gdp.

the green line their is u.s. investment in gear, equipment, software. it also rebounded very quickly in a very healthy way. the u.s. corporate appetite, the industry makes is bottomless. and it just keeps on growing. we like investment. will we don't like is the red line here which is the employment to population ratio, the percentage of working age americans who have worked. and that wind greater during the great recession and as flat line ever since. there is no rebound. so every month and the bureau of labor statistics put out its members this is the live look at command it's like the cagey of a dead person. it is not going anywhere. it's at a level lower than it has been for about 30 years, before way into the u.s. work

force. as the bad news. i cannot tell a happy story about that red line. i promised you a good news bad news story. this next slide violates that pledge because i can't tell i good story about 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 that one of these lines is not like the other. and the one at the bottom is the decade just lived through. even before the recession job growth was really anemic compared to previous decades where we have data. it was so bad at the end of the decade there were fewer americans. there were fewer americans working at the end of the decade in the beginning. i can't tell at this story about that. before i put this next line up the need to make one thing clear i am a capitalist. i like our system of private

enterprise and entrepreneurship. i like that stuff. the reason i need to say that in advance because of about to put up a slight of capital versus labor. when i do that everyone expects me to be wearing cachet t-shirt. media can buy one. is not going to have him on it. the blue one here is corporate profits. again, higher than it's ever been on a really healthy upward trajectory, and you notice that that did put agree recession was sharp and short. look how quickly the profits came rebounding back. again, we kind of like that. the red line there is the total amount of gdp that gets paid out in wages to all americans every year, and you notice that those blue and red lines are doing a dance back-and-forth per most of the postwar history. and then sets about the 25th

century that red line has been cratering really, really heading south. all the more amazing to me is that red line includes the wages paid to some categories mike ceos and other top managers and professional athletes. if you took there wages out of that it would be heading south even more quickly. again, of very clear good news bad news picture of the economy. and this is a story of what has been happening to the different levels of education of the past several decades. if you have a college education your real wages had been on an upward trajectory and classically more education the better ways trajectory. the problem here is that those bottom three lines represent all workers with less than a college degree, less than a full college education. those real wages are lower than they were more than 30 years ago

. the bigger problem is that they represent somewhere around 60% or more of the american work force, fewer than 40 percent of american workers have a college degree. minorities doing better over time and the majority is slowly losing ground. the superstar, this is not the graph of the 1%. this is the 1 percent of the 1%. how much national income are they taking home. in d.c. that in the postwar era we have this time of relative equality. there's no arguing that we are heading to more of a winner take all economy. here's the last one. this is a line of my colleague

and co-author, in other words, it used to be the case that things we care a great deal about wrongdoing of. output command gdp per capita, productivity, jobs, job growth in wages. all four of those are great. and the great news is for several decades we have exactly that. and then in recent years again you see this best of times worst of times battered with the two lines related to productivity and output actually continued. and the ones related to wage growth, the green line. and in job growth. you see that they have leveled off and in some cases even changed the direction. takes some less than it did in

the 1990's. i can't tell happy story about that. i find myself simultaneously encouraged by some economic statistics and finding some real challenges and the ones related to jobs and wages. as the end of it. thank you for bearing with me. >> when you think about these three factors. >> i'm at technologies dollar. the smoking gun here as technological progress. globalization has been the prime culprit and that easy victim. the most careful research is coming in and said that it's actually not what's going on. there had been a great work published just in the past year by people who were not technology beach like i am. they're labor economists. when you look at the patterns of the past 30, 35 years and you

look at capital versus labor or look at all hollowing out and the polarization of the middle-class, the culprit is technological progress, the fact that computers and a eye and robots can do stuff that we used in the classic middle-class labor for. and that is the main explanation for a lot of the trends of showing here. >> you are you in your book,. [inaudible question] >> if you're a busboy it's not that you have a high-paying job or a prestigious job, you have a job that is safer technology for the foreseeable future. there is no robot anywhere in the world that can do this. let alone walk across a room, cleared table without breaking everything and terrifying the restaurant. so those jobs that involve

low-level, poorly paid interacting with the physical world, a therapist and a dog groomer, gardner, busboy, those are relatively safe. super high in jobs, data scientist, ceo, stuff like that also appear to be safe from automation. it's 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, both low and high in that mid range. >> is that your sense of what is going on around the world are just speaking about the american middle-class specifically? >> and as you readjust about the time. it's a great question. again, the recent research is adding up and it's pointing the finger pretty clearly at progress. the labor versus capital, the blue line verses the red. and a lot of countries around the world it came to a very clear conclusion.

paid out to wages and countries included. >> going up dramatically. >> is still not been and is losing ground. >> and in particular the altar of the are gaining ground even quicker. less equal than it was the earlier 40 years ago. >> how does that look compared with a you label the first machine revolution on the first industrial revolution? we see the same trends. >> yes and no. we see this before. we have the first industrial revolution was steam power, electrification which was a big deal. the batter now we see from the past is that there can be a transition which can be long and

painful to some workers, but then those waves of progress will eventually be good news for the average worker. wait a little while and we will see healthy job growth. i kind of say you had three and a half decades. what we're seeing is the opposite of that. don't take that much comfort. >> that's awesome. >> can we all start our comments that what? >> i just want at a few things. i think it's a murder mystery. who killed the middle class? who killed the american dream? >> that's a little harsh. >> and they could be the case that technology is the culprit. i think there are some accomplices and now want to talk

about that. you know, markets were working really well. the work according to rules. right now think the rules are pretty wacky if you're middle-class working families. and they have been for a while. so whenever damage is being done by technology there are accomplices. even the conversations going on about the minimum wage. it is a completely arbitrary decision that the minimum wage should be pegged to a something like whenever congress gets around to raising it. the minimum wage would be not $7 an hour and 19.

whether now we have corporate charter reform with corporations that behave differently than they do right now. the quarterly earnings, pay through the nose. that's pretty much the only game airplane. you can have a different corporate charter that actually let's stakeholders and not just on calder's have some influence. there are actual decisions. part of the reason, we live in the united states of an asian. that's where we live. no history beyond the last for most of us. thinking about anything. the middle-class bill than the constitution. you know, america, the middle-class. we forget.

the greatest invention in the world and the middle class. it was created in builds here, not only by the employers but also by the labor unions. they used to be a huge, huge deal in trying to get employers to behave in a particular way. the new deal. he has this thing called the american dream. the contrast with the rest of us , there were going to keep the game going by doing two things cannot pay fair taxes so we can keep investing. it would pay fair wages. if you work harder you get paid more. that was the deal. at some point they decide.

and now you have employers and corporations sitting on big piles of cash, but they are not investing in. the american corporation. eleven bermuda. you don't see anybody going to jail for this stuff. technology is doing something really, really terrible. at least in the short term, right now. i think that there are accomplices that ought to be called out. >> the guy he thinks technology is a good thing. >> so my. >> i don't believe that it's all by itself. i was reading a book getting ready for this panel and saw some interesting parallels.

it touched on some of this. when we lived through the industrial revolution we saw the gilded age. we on of these stories of the rockefellers and carnegie and there that we were living through with this massive wealth creation and israel stratification that was on one of these charts. we also saw public policy come together to rectify some of that or change that direction. it was very bipartisan. he go down there and see what the progressive republican era was about. >> home as a last time you heard those two words side by side? >> but it was. there were driving this. how long is the work week, the labor force, can children go to work? pushing education. to your ten, 12, 14. some of the stuff was pushed. the democrats took over and post delivery unions, social insurance the use of from fdr, massively progressive taxation. you had all panoply of public

policy. part of the required it to be a consensus. you have a political consensus. what i think we're going through now is somewhat similar. we have this technology driving a sports and it is a whole host of a facts, network, digital. for a lot of reasons you get this man's wealth creation at the top. i don't think we have exactly figured out the public policy things. we don't have any consensus about solving the problem. if we lifted that last year and drove education from something that was not even accessible unless you're rich to mass, public, and required for ten are 12 -- ten years, what have we done? we have not really move that forward.

maybe the answer is as simple as two more years my universal prepaid or universal pre pre k or maybe you can't quit when your 16. and how you have some -- as a society when you see the chart that says if you get through college going to make so much more wealth, we have to figure out how to motivate ourselves to drive people through that. he looked to me now was like amelya, but some people are maybe you're the college. maybe that's true, but also 50 years 60 years ago how many people sitting in this rough or not me to get to college because of their ethnic heritage, their religious heritage. there are a lot more people that we can push a lot further. the right incentives, policy, and support. this is what our community expects. we have to get out there and motivate and work to make that happen. my epiphany is maybe we just need to require people to get more education and see where

that texas. >> that sounds like a democrat. >> i have to jump in with two reactions. when i go on a technology ran my fellow panelists point out to immediate reactions. technology must be bad. now. the old joke among economists is that technological progress is the only free lunch we believe in. trying to stop the flow of technology makes less sense to me than padlocking all the schools and bulldozing all roads. is the worst possible move reconnect. this is the best economic news on the planet. the question is about the distribution of the pie because there is no economic law that says that everybody has to benefit equally from the benefits to five from the bounty of technology. that law does not exist. the data are worse showing was my attempt to get across the back of the distribution is becoming a store near an thornier issue. i want to agree vigorously.

this is not written in stone. when i show my did you can walk away. we're screwed. we're absolutely not. i could not agree more that technology is not destiny. we get to shape our destiny as a society, and there are interventions and policy changes and horses we can make that will be effective at reversing the course and bringing back some of the stuff. a large stable prosperous middle class is just one of the jewels that america has created. >> no way for it to get tarnished. >> one thing i just want to point out, we talked a little bit about inequality from the point of view of the pier numbers in income. the african-american middle class in particular is in real peril. that's why i'm interested in this conversation.

a philosophy for the immigrant. the african-american middle class. and that is shocking. that job of the middle class, i just want to point out that african-americans had a strategy to get into the middle class and stay there. and all these pillars have been knocked over. it's a very simple strategy. college education, employment mainly in this public sector. a dad was a teacher or a postal worker or firefighter, something like that. the home ownership piece was huge. so huge your never heard of a

single african-american athletes . never, not once. [inaudible] that is a huge deal. it's like gambling. or not going to be irresponsible and the in the stock market all three of those in the public sector should, 70 percent of our well, 70%. we are now back. strategy. so especially now think as were thinking about where the middle class goes you have some parts of the middle class or suffering and don't have a go for a

strategy. >> as the so-called super star fact, spreading out of the turn on ability, you know, you have this thing in the economy where factory workers, only so many. but you could be 10,000 times productive. is there something inherent to that as we see a spreading out of individual productivity? how we sort of catch up to that. >> this is a great question. there are two very, very different views on what is going on. you are seeing a meritocracy in action. every guy or woman running a high-tech company and i talked to says i cannot make a high enough premium.

it's not and cannot a hundred times more than an average one. thousands of times better. that does create some values. with the. [inaudible] >> it's kind of like the top of the chain. i pay you a lot, you pay me a lot. which of those two was going on, the clearest answer is both a pretty clearly going on. i have seen most of the people of the top of the 1 percent of the one person to, basically people who are not the

innovators. very, very large organizations. we can argue about that, but there are clearly those of us about the very, very high end. >> this is something. >> there's one way. >> one of the things that is interesting -- i work as a venture capitalist and there is no doubt that there is this question we pay people that run big companies to much because the first of the differentiation at least will we see, we are continuing to sea in small businesses where you have private equity ownership for venture-capital ownership for it with the guys that on the company, on the board and involved stated date were continuing to see that same bifurcation where we're pushing ceo pay up dramatically faster.

that speaks to the fact that we think there is some meritocracy there. it's not like just lost on the public. a sweetheart deal which is will we talk about. >> work not talking a 20 person company. we feel like that differentiation, you're seeing the company with an excellent ceo. maybe it's just a ripple down, the winner take all technology solution. we say we can get that incremental gain and they're willing to pay for that even at the early stages. i know it makes a lot of sense of you think about and really hard. if your regular person, normal people are sitting here trying to figure out.

>> i live in d.c. in california let me explain to you, coming sent to a town near you. eventually in northern california there's a town called o'brien. and that's within easy driving distance of silicon valley, about half an hour 45 minutes. people are making some much money in silicon valley that it feels like silicon valley is basically purchasing the of the city. now, we have seen that before, but this is weird. usually when some group comes in and they have an income they start doing things to make things better for everyone.

so now you're in of london waiting for boss. no city bus comes. the group will bus comes by with blacked out windows and wi-fi for the people who are running. that's weird. a privatized said of gains. so there's going to be a situation at some point where my fear is that silicon valley start to feel like the new wall street. it used to be a silicon valley was the approval of the american dream, the proof that you or anybody could go in your garage and work hard and educate yourself and compete and succeed. now rather than -- in some

places it's the killer of the american dream. in this winner-take-all economy needs of the people with their absence robots and smart screens . i thought there are going to stop there. now -- i think we're ordinary people of are trying to understand this thing. there's this new technological elite that has somehow been able to disrupt -- i did not go for these guys. disrupting everything they can get there hands on making a ton of money. they're paying there ceos more than some countries. >> and going to bring you when.

as new york is grown, i'm curious how you see this playing out or not playing out. >> i want to apologize. we should have a woman on this panel. [applause] one thing i want to make sure everyone understands is that silicon valley does not represent the entire community. there is always to cover first of the tech industry which is a lot more going on. in particular, new york where they're is a tech renaissance happening. it's a very different culture them what you would see in silicon valley where the business is primarily built on hardware and companies like h-p and apple and obviously intel and now global. basically the infrastructure of

the internet. the application layer where the real resources are not technology but human talent. if elected in the city that has high-quality human talent you will see some sort of tac renaissance happening where people are thinking about building their own caps, starting their own companies, trying to figure out some way the ticket manager these companies which are disruptive. the problem not just in new york is that the legislative and regulatory environment is not able to keep of with the speed of technology. so is in the fiction happening in a good. but there is not enough speed to be able to create infrastructure the satisfy the people even if they have a right to buy an apartment or house.

so there's a work around. if we allow all these were grounds to happen one of a lot more disruption. i have not read the book, but there's a fascinating book. it just came out. thank you. >> read this one. >> they're too big points to be made in a book. the title of it is capelin the 21st century. the first argument is you cannot separate in economic thinking from political thinking. economists for decades have bill themselves as scientists are basically just looking at data associated with economics and not necessarily looking at the underpinnings of our political there would affect as economic determinations'. the second big point is that when capitol grows faster than gdp will start seeing a big separation between rich and poor . >> and guess what's going on

these days? >> and that's what's going on right now. there are arguments to be made that that will be a blip in the screen. countries where gdp is growing, we are lifting of plots and lots of people into the middle class. 70 percent of the world's population now is living in a much higher standard than there were tenor 15 years ago. in fact, i think the increase of people used live on $1 a day to $2 a day which sounds a ridiculous amount of money in the u.s., but that's the 100 percent increase in income in bangladesh or in some poor part of the world. exactly. in any case, the point is there is an argument to be made that humanity is all is much better off now than it has ever been before. i think we will be careful not to litigate this issue through a straw. we have to start thinking about this more realistically. >> i want to make two points. i really don't something, it

doesn't matter if what's going on these days is economically rational if it's perceived as unfair. so an economist with look at the boss and say, this is awesome. it's not preventing anyone else might be on the boss. it's sitting on carpool, probably reducing total carbon emissions. this is awesome. it's perceived, the perception gets out that this is pending the rules are not fair to the people of oakland, then came over. and i'm kind of what you. they're is a real danger. the new wall street, the new engines of the villain the economy which would be entire, dire outcome. it's incumbent on the tech community to engage in the conversation and make sure that it does not have in that direction. i think one of the most challenging elements of what we're going to is the technology

is changing so quickly that it's really hard for the institutions , a political decision making processes to keep up. is not the fastest moving part of the world, but when things are changing as quickly it's really hard for a lot of our existing organizations and institutions to keep up. the only thing we can do as members of our organizations and society is advocate for the right kinds of changes. if it weren't for washington's elite that would follow what we want them to do. >> and that's a great transition the government's -- >> well, a couple of things. oneness in politics i think we have this, i think, why we have been telling ourselves and the public which is that we are in the agents of change. there's a campaign about hope.

[laughter] you know, you have a problem. don't worry. we will change it. vote for us. come to our protest or whenever. i think we have to stop saying that. these guys are driving change. the technology as a driving change. silicon valley and all of this metaphorical splendor, the technology guys in austin and boston and new york city and elsewhere, chicago, that's what's driving the change. politics has to start saying, look, we're not going to make change. someone else is doing that. we will make change your friend. that's a new job assignment. changes coming. the robots are coming, that cirque coming, smart screens are coming. drive up to mcdonald's, there will be a flat screen, push a button. a robot will handier burger. there will never be a human

being that touches it. that's coming. so how do you make change your friend? i think we need to get a little more humble. at the same time there to things i think are important. number one, i was just in silicon valley yesterday. the level of non diversity -- you mentioned this panel not being diverted, the level of non diversity -- i don't know if that's even a word. >> the level of diversity. >> the level of diversity. thank you. the level of diversity was bad. [laughter] not to get too technical. and it was really shocking to see, first of all, the splendor, facebook campuses, amazing stuff, amazing people, the energy, the creativity the you just see very large chunks.

that's very, very bad. number one, we are wasting genius. they're is a genius in the african-american community, latino communities, there's genius in the projects, detention centers command we are wasting it even know where building industry is supposed to be built on genius. someone is losing out on money and market share. there are people missing out on real opportunities. i think we have to focus in on that pretty aggressively. think the talk about education. science, technology, engineering, and math if you know the people who came up with this, tell them not to do that. >> is best better?

>> by itself. >> it's mandatory. i'm all for all of the and it is now on science and math and that kind of stuff, but that is not a job training strategy. ..

what neighborhood you grew up in education is highly hereditary and you look it the people that up graduated with computer science degrees from top universities and they don't look very diverse. >> they have both the stations and south asians. that's a pretty good diversity. >> the question is how do we change our education system into one that actually can take people and find the genius in all parts of our society? >> i have to jump in here because education is something that everybody in this room is probably passionate about education. i don't know politician who is an passionate about education but this argument about scarcity and abundance related to education and the internet offers an opportunity for abundance so here's an example. how many hours of the year and percentage time do you think schools are actually open?

it's about 15%. kids are actually in class about 9% of the time. >> they have to be home in the summer to pick crops. >> we of a program in a country called e-rate that make schools and libraries connected to the internet and they're trying to refund it and republicans are trying to defund it that when kids are in school and they have access to the internet we figured out its 1% of all the time in the year so let me ask you in this room how many of you would be productive and successful if you had access to the internet 100% of all the time in your life? we have to think about him from from -- information as currency and i think the biggest opportunity and i don't disagree with van and hanks work is important and we are trying to celebrate the amount of education and training available to underserved communities in this country we

have a huge problem with that we have a broadband duopoly in this country that makes the cost of broadband beyond the reach of most working-class people to be able to participate in the economy if they want to sell and teach themselves how to participate. it $89 or seven or $800 a year they can afford it so you have kids literally holding laptops trying to pick up wi-fi signals and doing their homework on smartphones. they shouldn't be. they should be accessing the internet at the fastest speeds possible because the they have internet access they can leapfrog and gain social economic equity themselves. we don't have enough teachers to teach them to the kids that hank wants to train and that's another problem. the other thing is we are going to throw humanities out the window in a rush to get the stem education forget how important humanities are in people's lives. we should be really careful about focusing on just science and math and taking a holistic

approach. back to the broadband issues. i want to connect back to politics for a second. if you look at how much money has gone into the hands into the pockets of politicians paid for by comcast and verizon and others you will start to see a pattern of trying to protect the market. their 19 states that have laws on the books that make it impossible for states states cities are municipalities or counties to offer broadband services to its employees. 19 states because those states some county cusack ever mayor or state legislators propose they would give information access to a lower price to their citizens and those lobbyists from those companies went to those legislators and pacs tons of campaign contributions into those pockets and laws were passed that are blocking information access. it's worse than that. now i'm going to give you a different scenario which is named the company, an organization or an institution founded before 1994 that today

wants to see the internet in everyone's hands available as low cost with as much information to the hands of people as possible. think about it. 1994 is ground zero. that's when the mosaic rouser was invented. those companies that were founded before then organizations institutions governments they hate the internet. it's disruptive to their markets. they may have social media strategies and they may use the internet in e-commerce but they want to put the genie back into the bottle. look at the nsa revelations. what does that tell you about power and trying to control information? if you look at companies after 1994, let's look before 1999bi before internet and ai after internet. the closer you were to ground zero and starting a company i.e. google the more you wanted to see information spread and google had a mission.

do no. however the further and further away it got from 1994 they have had to turn the results into a pretzel and not -- are no longer able to do no because of two major reasons. one is the guys who got started before 1994 are now getting smart and they're trying to crush everybody who came in the ai period and government regulation is pushing back and market forces like wall street are demanding quarterly returns and showing companies are making money on the aai side so they have turned themselves into pretzels to try to privatize it and all the while the average person who just wants access to information is getting screwed. where do we all fit in? somebody asked me this question. how many of you have had terms of service from beginning to end before you press the green on the access to your phone or your

computer? one person. we are having a massive debate about the net neutrality and the use of data and we are not participating in that conversation. do you know whose fault that is? hours. we we are letting politicians and corporations with huge pools of money dictate the future so van is right. it's going to fail because we are not this intermeeting and disrupting politics. that is the problem. we want the open internet but it's not going to work that way. you have to have an open democracy so that the byproduct is the open internet. the open internet is not going to create an open democracy. >> joe you asked about -- [applause] you asked about the right playbook here. any economist would say the right economic playbook for this period in the short term is

actually really straightforward. it's even easier to remember. all you have to keep in mind is e. i e. i o. the old mcdonald theme song in your head over and over. that will tell you what the classic econ 101 playbook is entrepreneurship, immigration, education infrastructure and a little bit of foresight -- basic research would be fundamental. we are doing a lousy job at most elements of the playbook right now. we talked about education i couldn't agree more. andrew mentions infrastructure and broadband. the american society of civil engineers gives our current infrastructure d+. this is a first world country. what are we doing with any a+ level infrastructure? this makes no sense from a basic economic respect of so one of the things that frustrates me is maybe the econ 101 playbook is not going to be sufficient to change the direction to get us

some of some of the unpleasant situations wherein. it's absolutely necessary though and we are doing not doing a lot of it very well right now. >> one person here who has served as a member of congress as we have seen we are currently fighting about how much to cut government budget. one of the things he said was it was pretty expensive. if we were to want to make those investments how his art political system and can our political system get us there? >> i think it requires people to get involved and to make the case to their elected officials that is what they want. i was listening to andrew's talk about this. does anyone think the world was different in the 1920s or 30s when general electric control the electric supply and they said it's too expensive to run electricity to a farmhouse in rural warren county where we live in upstate new york. absolutely not. it was the exact same story in

the debate one on. could the government give them money? that is not what we decided to do. what did the government decide to do? they decided to borrow money and make an investment and they didn't just give it to the large corporations. they actually built rural electric does. who were designed to keep the cost down here they warrant for-profit. they were designed to keep the cost down so not just that year but forever they would have lower cost access to the sun believable technology. how much more information could you get when you have lights to read after dark. this is revolutionary change in the guys in the city had it a so the folks in the city were ahead and the parts in the rural upstate new york were getting the same benefits so all the same dynamics that we have the political will to come together and do that so it just requires people to say to their elected officials that is what they want you have to decision but it can be done. it's not impossible. you can overcome the selected interest that are fighting against it and you can come up

with a better solution and give them the money. >> can i add to that for just a minute. the mission seems to be a classic case of what you're talking about. a majority of the people support conference of immigration reform. it has one house of congress and yet we don't have it yet. can you give us an explanation of why not? [laughter] >> i can. you have something called the hastert rule when hastert was the speaker of the house. the lesser majority of the republicans wanted the bill to go to the floor and it would not go to the floor. if it were to go to the florida house today would pass. they won't let the bill come to the floor. so that means there has to be a majority of republicans who are going to be called by people in their districts not by tweeting at them not by facebooking them but by actually getting people business owners and others who

believe immigration reform is the best move forward for this country's to get the bill to the floor. >> doesn't make sense to you? >> that's a big part of it. >> when you have a split congress you need a majority to republicans and the house in the democrats sent to be pushing the same thing at the same time. that doesn't explain why we didn't pass it five years ago. i think the reality is there was less public support for it five years ago. the other big thing is going on but i think is useful for people to understand immigration reform sounds simple. we all know what that means. you know exactly what it means? there artiles republicans talking about six different bills so there are things everybody agrees about and things that they don't and the coalition that agree about all of those things aren't always the same and one of the things that goes on in rushing 10 is this might be popular with everybody but leadership doesn't necessarily let that pass because they want these other three things over here and if they keep the popular thing attached these other things maybe it will pull it all along.

so this is an immigration form form -- reform make a pass right on the house in the senate but for various political reasons because people are trying to work the angles to get other pieces of it attached. >> h-1b visa's will be passed in the house tomorrow. [inaudible] >> it's not bad congregated. it's just frustrating. >> i willette said to jump in here. >> ander said we shouldn't look at these things through a straw. your explanation of how the house is working his accurate but inadequate. there is a much bigger thing going on. first of all the way the public is being informed right now. i would argue any of you if you have an uncle or an ex-boyfriend

or girlfriend that gets their news from a news station that is named after predatory dishonest furry mammal. >> not naming any names. >> just saying that there may be someone you know who actually gets their news about this issue from a news source that is named after a predatory mammal known for being dishonest. i'm not going to mention fox by name but i'm just saying. it's very easy to make us -- make this all very simple. if only the house bill were more simple or if only we had more attention to pro-democracy stuff on the internet. here's the reality. we have got to make real change. we have to be as sophisticated as the thing we are trying to change.

hank's strategy by itself will fail as will anybody else's strategy by cell. what we have got to begin to understand here is that we found ourselves right now in a moment where we have the best informatiinformati on distribution system in the history of the world. we have more access to more data but we are getting dumber because the information system is growing and the -- system is not. there something missing at this stage of the storied where we actually don't understand each other. in fact on the show crossfire i get to stand next to my good friend newt gingrich and we bring all these guys on and you would think we lived in different countries. we haven't figured out how to hack that problem where no people can pick their own informational environment and honestly believe that barack obama president obama has opened up the borders and let those people fled the country.

these canadians. when in fact he has the more -- reported more canadians than any president before. we can't even agree on that. the hastert rule would not be a general rule if we could be outside the fact free pick your own blog world or take your own tweet stream reality where people can't agree on basic facts of the problems are much more complex. i think it's very important what hank is doing because we have got to get more people involved who have a stake in more parts of the problem so when you give people the tools and the technologies you are not just getting into one demographic. >> can i challenge the people in this room? andrew talked about reaching out to members of congress. i would challenge everybody lives in the city the most diverse city in the world unbelievable immigrant population and unbelievable tech

community, stop talking to each other because there aren't a lot of people you can convince in this world. most of you did not grow up in new york. call your friends that are from alabama or from north dakota. or they came from missouri like i did and we watch "fox news" every day. or watch "msnbc." >> i want to underscore this. i just want to brag. most people that i know are people like myself. friendless nerds, bully magnets, unloved by anyone outside of our media family and in fact everyone in our media building. we blend the middle of the country to the coast where we reinvented ourselves as activists or whatever and did the best we could to forget all those people.

now most of us we can't even go home for thanksgiving without inflicting or receiving massive amounts of trauma because we just can't agree. that's something we can no longer indulge. we know how to speak mecca america. we know how to not make everybody mad at the dinner table and still make her points and i know as a progressive democrat we have got an isolated into our own stuff and frankly as arrogant and intolerant as we sometimes accuse their counterparts. >> i live in cambridge massachusetts and i have no idea what your talking about. >> i want to remind you of some of the best questions from the ipad. i'm going to ask one of the audience questions and some of these questions have been answered but here's an interesting one that said when

do we say simply working hard at mcdonald's isn't enough? when do we turn our attention to the public mind-set about we have a lot of people traveling and a lot of people working 50, 60, 70 or so we can minimum-wage jobs and working really hard. they're not making anything close to middle class wage. at what point does the mind-set change? >> one of the ideas we talk about in the book advance by the noted socialist milton friedman in the 1960s said we have a positive income tax were above some level of income you have to give some money. richard nixon, frederick hayek a bunch of the crazy pinkos got together in the 60s and said above a certain level of the government pay money to the government. how about a low level of the government you get money from the government. it's a lovely idea because it provides a directive incentive for work. no matter who i talk to left or

right we have this great fondness for work that i think it's extraordinarily well placed. he gives you something to do and it gives you a community and meaning and dignity. work is great. if people are working hard and not able to make ends meet let's prop them up. the economist toolkit has ways to do that. they used to have really broad bipartisan support. nixon campaigned it for a wild. it's time to bring these ideas back to the public discourse. >> i agree with that area to go back to the conversation that's policy. that's another thing that you get a right left coalition going and if those at the news channel can say that's right because it works and to get something done suddenly a lot of the numbers look very different.

not only because technology is different but because the policy is different. became the omnipotent width technology. >> if i can jump in one more time on that. pass the stuff you want to see less of an subsidize the stuff you want to see more of. the u.s. federal government gets 80% of its taxes from taxes on labor. if we like work and we like labor we are violating basically the fundamental tenet of economics. we can ship that around if we really want to. i am completely with van. we can change our policies in the face of this title wave is hitting us. we are not hopeless at all in the face of that. >> did you have government transfer stuff that would be separate from what you are showing? 's vpn and income tax credit is much like that.

>> inclusive of taxes and transfers. >> will immigration reform push down wages for skilled middle-class employees that but boost pay for tech executives? >> i'm sorry? >> will immigration reform push down wages for skilled middle-class employees but boost pay for tech executives? >> that's interesting. >> in some cases yes, in some cases no. we have to figure out some way to get talent into this country to give it the innovation to proceed and train teachers to go in the schools. we need immigration in every way possible. unfortunately we are not going to see a regressive tax or any tax reform for a long time so looking to the government to solve this problem by policy is

a little ways off proportionately i'm sorry to say yes it would be great if we were talking to each other and calling of our friends in parts of the country that should be calling their elected representatives and telling them to pass immigration reform that we keep thinking somehow we are going to elect people to solve our problems looking around ourselves and trying to solve our own problems. what would that look like? let me give you an example. e-government is where government is using tools that we use every single day to deliver the services we expect them to deliver. governments are starting to use more of these tools every single day creating efficiencies of various kinds that they are also collecting massive amounts of data and some governments are starting to release that data to the public and people are taking a public and building on top of that. moreover we are collecting lots of data ourselves. so when we are walking down the street or in a car we are collecting data and people are

collecting that data. some people are emerging that data with government data and new tools and applications and platforms that are useful to people in their daily lives and doing it faster than the government can. my favorite example is exit strategy which is an app that tells you where to stand on the plot or mama subways. the stairway you want is right in front of you. that wasn't built by the mta. that was built by her that took mta data which by the way took data they collected themselves and the police it was a security threat. they basically built that map. another example is an open-source tool built during the kenyan election in 2007 that was disputed and was used in haiti to help people identify where hospitals were an water was in resources were. it wasn't built by fema or the government it was built by people.

what we have an opportunity to do is to go from waiting for e-government in the 21st century to get ourselves to weak government where we and hillary clinton was right, we built the village that we want. in troubled times viewers concerned about your neighbors as you were because your villages systems and/or your own life might depend on. we have lived in the factory model a prussian model of education and the factory model on economics. in this country where we forgot about facing each other in solving our own problems. we don't need more civic acts. we need acts that are more civic. imagine introducing people who are using -- leasing apartments to each other so they could petition for a better us to pick them up for a better school or universal pre-k or what if the owners of buber

were not venture capitalists but the drivers themselves. we talk about the sharing economy and the owners get paid in cash. it's not a sharing economy. the way to solve our political problems over the next few years is not leaving government alone but to partner with each other. >> the initial question was about immigration reform and metal skilled wages. if anyone is hurt by massive waves of immigration it ain't very much. if anyone at is hurt its people at the lowest end of the wages those busboys and people like that. the evidence they have offered is not very much. everywhere else immigration is a net positive. we just don't need to debate this anymore. the researchers to clear. >> i