stephen colbert, john oliver. there's a lot of people doing, you know, what they used to do. so the competition is much more fierce. >> jim miller, when you're not writing books, what do you do? >> i write for paper, and i do media consulting. >> jim miller, tom shales, live from new york: the complete, uncensored history of saturday night live. this is booktv on c-span2. >> up next, author and think tank b president arthur brooks. the former french hornist turned social scientist talks about his research on charity, happy and free enterprise. -- happiness and free enterprise. the head of the american enterprise institute is the author of four nonfiction books including new york times bestsellers gross national happiness and "the road to freedom." ... >> host: arthur brooks, where did the phrase "gross national happiness" come from? [laughter] >> guest: the phrase comes from

the government of bhutan, i should say the king of bhutan about 30 years ago realized that a process of development, of economic development, was great. it would pull millions of people out of poverty. people wouldn't starve to death, but it wasn't enough for human flourishing. so instead of counting narrowly the amount of money people had per capita, he had the idea of trying to measure the amount of happiness. he started an index called gross national happiness. that's wher he started an index called gross national happiness. that is where the expression comes from. >> host: what did he find? >> guest: a lot of measures of economic growth are great and the determinate for living the good life but not sufficient so cultural integrity, family values, being able to maintain one's faith in god, these other things people need for flourishing lives and in so doing, developing country has a lot of lessons.

>> host: can you measure happiness the economic success? >> guest: no. we can find predetermined for a good life by looking in economic indicators that that doesn't get you far enough. there are four things that can lead us to happiness and they don't involve many paris day. let me back. people are poor and have deprivation and deciding whether to pay for medicine or food they're less likely to be happy. the most miserable countries in the world are places where people die of starvation and preventable denny's says. the things that bring us happiness our faith, family, friends and work. those of the things we have to keep in mind, parts of human

flourishing. >> host: from your book peter slen 13 the number of americans who are at the purse is those who are not, can we save that the united states is the country? what is your answer? >> guest: the answer is generally yes. so many indices which country is happier than another and are not reliable. part of the reason is different cultures answer the question differently. a survey, how happy are you? find that countries with dramatic languages and answer the question differently, it is that ridiculous. that said, you find the united states is the country largely of immigrants, these of the people most optimistic about their lives. is fair to say the united states on balance is a relatively happy country. that said happiness has suffered in recent years in part because of the recession and the great malaise a lot of people are feeling about optimism of the

direction the country is going and this is an opportunity for policy makers to try to change the direction we are going. >> host: should politicians make a tap the? >> guest: they have a responsibility to make us happy. in point of that route history politicians who call themselves the purveyors of happiness are usually the worst dictators. the american secret is not leaders, they help us to pursue our own happiness. and they pursue this goal of happiness -- >> host: conservatives are happier than liberals. my reaction to this is primarily one of surprise because virtually every, but the politics of happiness turned out to be a variance with intellectual opinion and what i always thought the evidence is

the evidence. >> and not just in the united states, relatively hostile to organized religion, tells us traditional family organizations, it is a bad deal. this keeping people down, it is a force for repression. and work is something we should do lots of. we need more leisure time as opposed to more work. all those pieces of advice are wrong when it comes to having the happiest life. >> host: if you ask me how you could be happier and i told you to vote republican or go to church you might justifiably tell me to go jump in a lake. if i told you to give to charity i would be giving you excellent advice. everyone can give and give more

today. each and everyone of us can afford to dig a little deeper, giving to charity makes one happy. >> there's a lot of evidence on this. we don't have to dig far each of our lives is think about cases in which we felt happier by serving others. the most miserable people are the people who are most self-conscious. people who are most inwardly directed, those serving their own purposes and not thinking about. the way to break the cycle of melancholy in your own life is to stop focusing on yourself. this is not my philosophy, this is what the research indicates. there are interesting studies on this, cases where people use study the happiness of high school seniors, and natural experiment like a drug experiment, half the kids play board games, randomly assigned to help kids with their

homework, kids who are helping the other kids, they're happier after the experiment. one of the experiments is related to this, it was -- the researchers asked men to coming to the laboratory with a significant other, wives or girlfriends and here is the experiment, you need to walk from one building to another. with your wife or girlfriend so they do it. when they are halfway through there is an alleyway and a panhandler came out and asked them and for money. when they got to the other buildings they asked how much you give the panhandler they asked his wife or girlfriend how attractive do you find him and they found a correlation, the more money you give the panhandler the more your wife like you sell it turns out people are healthier, happier and even more handsome when they get to charity. >> host: we should give to

panhandler. >> political extremists. you write that they are happier on average but you also write there is evidence people with extreme views of fact everybody adversely because they are less compassionate than average, less honest and less concern for others. >> host: the thing about political extremism that i wrote about in the new york times, people with extreme political views are not troubled by the idea that somebody else might be right. it is hard to be secure in your deck of view when there's a possibility your philosophy is wrong. political extremists never entertain that possibility. they are more secure and tend to be happier. the problem is if you are not willing to entertain the possibility you might be wrong you are not going to humanize other people who don't share your point of view. we all deserve to have a world view. we deserve to save this is right

and this is wrong but it is the right thing to do to be tolerant of other people's point of view. if not you have an easier time of it in life and double happier but you will be spreading more misery around you. >> host: when you talk about the concept of flow in "gross national happiness: why happiness matters for america--and how we can get more of it" what does that mean? >> guest: was described by and great psychologists, a philosopher, social psychologist who teaches at claremont university in california. he wrote a famous book called flow and his research looked at the state in which people are in the zone. when they are doing work that is not too easy or hard they are challenged but not overwhelmed by a task that completely engages them emotionally, cognitively, psychologically, spiritually. hours turn into minutes. these experiences in your life, three hours, that is what we

will be doing here. it felt like ten minutes. that is the state of flow when you do what you are supposed to be doing and the hours flyby. >> host: translate this talk of gross national happiness, the u.s. is a happy country into politics. >> guest: as i mentioned a minute ago the job of politics is not to make us happy people. that is dangerous. stalin was called the purveyor of happiness. virtually nobody in the 20th centuries they've had their and some others who created more misery, deep moral malaise, in the 20th century, they claim there's a problem. when they talk about giving people the pursuit of happiness creating conditions for the pursuit of happiness is a uniquely and powering situation.

the secret to american dream, the secret to the great american life is giving us the ability to pursue our happiness and that is what politicians should be talking about. that is the reason opportunity is the most important thing politicians can be fighting for. >> host: translate that into policy. >> guest: policies we should be looking for are getting people to the starting line. what should we be talking about with respect to education, making sure people at the bottom have the opportunity to get ahead. we should be thinking about policies not that redistribute money so everyone has the same amount of money or culture but people can work to be rewarded on the basis of their hard work and marriage. this is the opportunity, society, policies that lead to the pursuit of happiness. >> host: in your most recent book "the road to freedom: how to win the fight for free enterprise" you write that increase in income inequality is a social goal means the the you don't understand the evidence or

you think is desirable to punish people at the top because they are rich. there is no way around this fact. >> guest: indeed. the problem of income inequality is some people are living in poverty and it is an avoidable errors and. it is something we can of oil. the way not to worry about it is the basis of equalizing in come so people -- it is materialism and materialism is wrong on the right and wrong on the left. but when the president of the united states or a politician or business leader gets up and says the greatest courage of our society is income inequality, he is saying that you because you have less than someone else are a victim of society, that is to reduce you to what we often call in my business homo economics, reducing usage your economic, that is a disservice to you and our society.

>> host: reading more from the road to freedom the evidence is clear, america has slipped into a big government social democracy. six of every dollar americans earn goes to the state. >> guest: that is true. $0.40 of every dollar goes to the united states which continues to grow virtually without pause. we like to tell ourselves we are not european democracy but the truth is that we are. we have redistributive tax code that is more progressive than most european allies if you measure that in terms of people who don't pay anything, you see regulation on par with the regulatory regimes of the big states of europe, americans don't consider them to the european social democrats and that is an encouraging thing. the reason i am optimistic is we may have the economic characteristics of our european cousins the don't have the mentality of european cousins and this gives us the

possibility for a way of escape. >> host: how do you square that? that we like government programs and we don't like big government? >> guest: the philosophy, we are with the individualists. government worked like a ratchet so when big government programs and social welfare benefits come they almost never go away. hard to get rid of. main area of government is redistributions on entitlements as everybody watching us today, a matter of people watching us are liberals or conservatives may no entitlement to the biggest form of spending, 70% of the rich dollar that goes to government goes to the social spending programs of entitlements, social security, medicare and medicaid. the problem is we haven't been responsible as a society about a way to rein in these programs in a way that won't bagger our children, make it harder for my

kids and grandkids and yours and everybody else that's out there to have the same opportunities you and i had because we will be spending so much money with the spillover benefits as well of the united states not being able to take its rightful place as leader among nations because it will become too expensive. all the oxygen in the government will increasingly be devoted towards social spending, suboptimal socially and suboptimal internationally, that is the problem we face. >> host: translate that into a policy. how do you reform these programs? >> guest: we need to have leaders that the opposed to leaders that followed. if you are putting your finger in the air, opinion polls say people don't want social security reform, you are being a follower. you are not being a leader. what leaders do is endorse sacrifice, help people in a country, to see something bigger

than themselves. the ultimate sacrifice if we go to war when we need to we should be able to reform entitlement programs and make sacrifices as a society to protect america for future generations. how do we do it? practically speaking we need politicians who have policies that reform social security and medicare and medicaid which we know how to do in a way that will cause temporary discomfort among certain interest groups but where those groups will be empowered to be heroically in charge of saving our country. the specifics on how to do it, we can talk about how to counter inflation differently and change the formulas so people are not retiring at 65 and 67, retiring in line with the demographic profiles of the american public where we allow states more latitude in how they use their funding where medicare is actually not a system that is open ended where people are

responsible for the prices of medical care and the basis of that. that is the basis of good policies and training spending and responsible way and americans take care of their own issue before it gobbles up a big part of the american dream. >> host: george w. bush tried social security reform ten years ago. >> guest: nobody expected it to be easy. if it were easy it would be done. there are ways to do this. ronald reagan did this in a bipartisan way to help reform and save social security for a long time. how would we do it? a couple basics. we don't count inflation in the right way. we have an inflated social security benefits dream. we need to take care of that. people are retiring at relatively close to the same age as the social security system was implemented decades ago yet they are living for decades longer. that is an obvious actuary problem. if we are going to live to be whatever we are going to live to

be, let's hope 85, 87 or 88 years old retiring at 65 that is something the public can't maintain. we have to reform that as well. >> host: the road to freedom, the job of the social safety net starts with an answer to this question. what is an unacceptable standard of living in america? in my view, you write, it is unacceptable for someone in america's wealth decided to go without access to basic medical care, sufficient food and basic shelter. pretty uncontroversial i think. >> guest: you would think yet we have lots of people who don't have basic access to those things. we are spending more and more money yet we have lots of people living in poverty so we have to deal with this in a way that transcends politics. the first thing to keep in mind for my friends on the right is declare peace on the safety net

per se perfect for an stearns that indigent. for my friend on the left wing need to talk about the safety net not extending those who are indigent and remember dignified life always has to attach work to welfare. if we can decide on these things caddy seeking at the greatest achievement we ever encountered and the answer is the free enterprise system which created so much wealth for our society. safety net is a wonderful and moral thing and we should fight for it but it should be for the indigent attached to work and reform the way the doesn't waste money like we are currently wasting money. we could be on the way to solving these problems. >> host: this e-mail came in from a viewer. as a society we appear to be mad for big programs. why do you suppose we don't do trials of these programs? it the team we don't know how to do that very well. we have a tendency -- let's back

up. the philosophy of public administration, philosophy of government is if we just can't get experts running things, get the people who really understand and spending of money we can solve the problem all at once, that is wrong. if you go into business, if you look of finance or any other area of society people don't have the conceit of thinking the smartest people will fall something to do trial and other, they look at pilot tests and programs and business areas, that is what venture-capital lists do yet government works in a different way. almost as if if i just get the equations right i have enough trillions of dollars i can solve these problems that is the wrong philosophy. the reason -- the reason because government is designed in the wrong way. we need the same philosophy entrepreneurs used to dominate the market.

we need humility as opposed to bombastic big government once and for all final solutions which don't work and waste money. >> host: let's follow this up with another e-mail. when we look at republican leadership by reminded of the saying be bold but not too bold. do you think the new congress can take bold action to help us all and what is the most important actions they need to take? >> guest: will they be bold enough? the answer to that question, a real opportunity to show a new direction in leadership, a new right movement. they didn't earn -- think about number 4. what is the signal from november 4th, 2014. was not the will of republicans. last time my book that gallup polling the favorability of republicans was 9%. i think north korea is 11%. no one was saying we love republicans on the back of

bumpers as i am driving to work. what they earned was the right to try new things and show some leadership. that requires real boldness. i understand the conservative tendencies, say don't prolong balls down the field but now is not the time for that. now is the time for aspirational leadership that does different things. what is the most important thing conservatives can do? the most important thing is a new approach to poverty in america. there are other things that are important, also critically important we need a foreign policies that brings back aggressive international optimistic spirit to american foreign policy which we lost because we have been in a foreign-policy tailspin, we need to continue with that or reestablish that as well. we need education reform, criminal justice reform. number one for republicans, the

opportunity in the next two years to distinguish themselves to become warriors for the poor, to say i don't care how poor people vote. this is our opportunity to do the right thing for this country, the bottom half has been left behind by the economic policies of the last six years. the economic policies that have effectively marvin 150 million americans who are at the bottom with less opportunity, less optimism, less aspiration. that is what we need to turn around, having a bias for working people and poor people in this country, we need policies that reward work and expansion of the earned income tax credit that makes work pay. this is a wonderful thing to do to show common cause with the american public to get back to work with expansion of energy policy, not just oil companies can make more money but so we have more energy in this country and more jobs and have a better climate for energy self-sufficiency and

independence in this country. these are the optimistic programs that come back to a preference for the poor. that is what conservatives need to do. that is number one. >> host: welcome to booktv's "in depth" program, our once a month program, one author, his or her body of work and your calls. 202-748-8200. in the east and central time zones, 202-748-8201. for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you can't get through and like to talk with arthur brooks you can send an e-mail, booktv@c-span.org. send us a tweet,@t is our handling you can make a comment on our face book page, facebook.com/booktv. take one of those forms, send a question or comment. arthur brooks is the author of

four policy books we want to show you. "who really cares: the surprising truth about compassionate conservatism" was his first, came on in 2006. "gross national happiness: why happiness matters for america--and how we can get more of it" which we have been talking about quite a bit, 2008, "the battle: how the fight between big government and free enterprise will shape america's future," came out in 2010 and his most recent book "the road to freedom: how to win the fight for free enterprise". what was your career path to become president of the american enterprise institute? >> guest: nontraditional feeder. when i was 19 years old i dropped out of college, kicked out, splitting hairs. i went down the road as the musician, spent 12 years as a professional french horn player as a classical musician. i had no aspiration to be, think

tank president. little kid say i want to be the president of a conservative think tank, not an ordinary aspiration for a kid. i want to be a french foreign player. i was able to do that. i played chamber music and wound up in the barcelona symphony where i spent several years. i got married in barcelona. at the end of that time i went back to college to finish my college education by correspondence when i was 30. it is a non-traditional have to be in debt thinktank president and virtually everybody watching us today has some peculiarities in their own background so this is not so special. i've left music and went to graduate school and got my master's in economics and ph.d. in public policy and college professor, georgia state university for three years and syracuse university for seven years and face your accuser university is a wonderful school

of public affairs, the privilege to be there. i love that. it was a great joy and i came to 8 e i at the end of 2008, a was a visiting scholar and as president in 2008. >> host: why did you leave music? >> guest: because i felt an almost physical need to use my brain in a different way. music is great. i love music and i still listen to a great deal of music. most of how i see the world is formed from an experience as a classical musician. the spiritual side of esthetics. the sense of how i appreciate becomes from my time as a musician but there was of much more in the world of ideas. my father was a college professor, mathematician and a liberal arts school, my mother was an artist. satisfied the aesthetic side and i was interested in developing the intellectual side. also had been influenced by a lot of thinkers and he was the

weird part. when i was still a musician i was reading the work of james wilson, irving kristol, milton friedman, charles murray and i was thinking really changing how i see the world. it made me into a free enterprise at the cat as a matter of fact which is contrary to my background. my parents were nervous about this. what i found that was interesting is i noticed there is one institution all these thinkers were involved which which was some place i never heard of before called the american enterprise institute which tied together is this moral sense and how we can execute it through the free enterprise system and american leadership and was so positive, so optimistic, a boundless understanding of what human dignity can mean and how it can be a gift to the world and i was attracted to a nationally. there is no greater privilege then to be at the helm of this institution by pure serendipity.

>> host: you used the word moral throughout your riding, moral arguments for free enterprise. we are moral people. people are more animals. >> guest: it is interesting to note when people are expressing their deepest sentiments they talk about morality. they don't talk about materialism. not talking about money. they don't quote data and statistics, they talk about what is right, right for them and right for others. if we fail to make the moral case for things we most deeply believe we are not making the best case. this is what has been wrong with the conservative movement for a long time. conservatives have dominated the material case of their point of view. conservative talk about the fact that capitalism, free enterprise, american greatness is the best way to bring the most material abundance to the most people. that is true and that is good but the question is why that matters and the answer is because it is deeply good and moral for people to feed their

families, to work with dignity, to support themselves and to live in safety and freedom. these are good moral things to do. not good material things to do. remembering the why of our work brings us back to morality and only use more language, we using the language written on our hearts. this is what we deserve to be able to do and what americans should expect from leaders, to hear the moral stuff they are made of. >> host: where did the title of "the road to freedom: how to win the fight for free enterprise" come from? >> guest: it is a play on the road to serfdom. one of the greatest economists of the 20 third centuries frederick hayek, univ. of chicago, involved in think takes in washington d.c. at the end of his life. hero of a book called the road to serfdom which says the way we are going where we have central planning, government control, scientism, his word for this conceit that people in government can solve human problems once and for all, this will be a still a kind of

servitude, moral and material servitude. that is the philosophy that led to the central planning regimes that ruined the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century, lookout in the west, look out, free countries, these things cost you a little by little as well. the positive of that is the road to freedom. what we need to do to get to freedom. that book has -- more important and better than mine but it is my attempt. >> host: in fat book "the road to freedom: how to win the fight for free enterprise" you write big government's co dependent wife is corporate cronyism. >> guest: a real blind spot for republicans and conservatives that is good for business, it is good for america, simply not true particularly in modern life. in washington d.c. and i like to tell audiences i live in washington so they don't have

to. it is not a healthy environment necessarily and one thing that is most disheartening about washington is this will to power that people have and the way they exploit it by wiring this system to their benefit and the worst offenders are corporate interests that are able to change policy and legislation and government leadership to their benefit. the way you solve that is not having so much power from bureaucrats and politicians to do that. that is why corporate cronyism that gets some people benefits to the expense of a lot of people around the country watching us today. >> host: is that a call for massive tax reform? >> guest: it is a call for massive tax reform, massive moral reform for people to be outraged to see what is going on in this country. remember a few years ago we were saying occupied demonstrations, occupy wall street, occupy case

street, occupy mean street, there were demonstrations all over the country. conservatives like me were tending to say so ridiculous, they are in green about the free enterprise system, how ridiculous. they were right. they were wrong in their policy prescription, less free enterprise, that is wrong. we need real free enterprise. they were right in the diagnosis what is wrong, there's not enough for system and it was gained by increasing the government's interests because increasingly the government purse say is the biggest special interest warping american life end giving special privileges to people in power so occupy wall street was quite respect as is the tea party, there is something deeply wrong and unfair. what is the prescription? less government, more free enterprise pushed all the way down to the bottom recognizing the safety net is the basis of equalizing the system so people

get a leg up and have opportunity. >> host: are you a scholar? an administrator, a fund-raiser? >> guest: i would like to think all three. i was a scholar before i came to a e i.t.. i got my ph.d. not working on these organizations and that is when i did most of my research call all about happiness but i was in syracuse. my job is to promote the work of my colleagues. my intellectual heros were michael novak and charles murray. they were working at the american enterprise institute. my privileges trading in a good part of my research agenda to promote that of others. the biggest part of that is raising the presence we need to support an entire of the donor driven organization. we get zero dollars from the government. we have taken not a dime from the u.s. government, we take all

of our funding, accept all our funding from investors or private individuals who want to see a better america. the real privilege is i can go out to donors around the country, not all of whom were wealthy and say i can do magic. i can take your little bit of money and transform it like out to me except real into an expression of your values. you want a better country, more freedom and fairness, you want to lift up the war and protect our nation, start with ideas. we are the source of ideas and is my privilege to take somebody's money and transform that into an expression of value. i was the donor before i came to a e i. >> host: arthur brooks is our guest. let's take some calls. eugene in maryland is first. >> caller: i want to piggyback

what arthur brooks said about tying work to welfare or federal programs. i also believe, i discussed this with friends. this should be a time limitation on these programs similar to what unemployment has, if you have not been able to improve your financial situation you have to show due diligence on your part, resumes, job applications, something an end to show you are trying to improve your situation and if you have shown do diligence it can continue but i do believe putting time limitation on these programs will provide the necessary fire under people to get up and be more active, proactive in their own improvement. >> guest: great observation and point of fact there are two elements in the welfare reform legislation in the 1990s that these ideas came out of the e i scholars and the welfare reform

ideas that were signed into legislation, by congress and president who are not paralyzed by fear willing to do bold things, bill clinton and the republican congress were able to do together, the two thing they did was they required work as part of welfare and they had time limits. within reason there are certain people that are not going to be able to work and a safety net will take that into account and to guarantee there are things they can do with respect to learning how to work, being in substance abuse programs or having work programs the government can backstop. people can do that but once you put those guarantees in place, work requirements and time limits are smart policy. >> host: palm dale, calif. you are on booktv. >> caller: i have a question regarding your earlier mentioning of a western

democracy. in europe, social democracy. is seen dimension negative con bad, very affective as some kind of disease whereas these countries, they do have quite a few of these factories have high gross domestic product per capita and high gross domestic happiness per-capita. what is wrong with social democracy in europe? >> guest: a lot of studies compare happiness between countries so your point is some studies shows that for example nordic social democracies have higher happiness per-capita, higher happiness indices. there are also studies that show the happiest countries are mexico and brazil and some show the happiest in the world are the united states and canada. there is not uniformity on these studies and the fairest interpretation of that is not if you want to be happy moved to

denmark. i don't recommend calling the moving company today. the way to measure that given that people answered differently in different places is to look happiness overtime and the uniformity between communities when you find communities are happy compared to others you see that difference has something to deal with. when it comes to per-capita income as a general matter the united states is more prosperous than virtually all the societies in europe so sweden which has held up as a model of reform they have done a lot of good things of late, sweden is in per-capita income and services is poor than all but three american states. i don't care and i don't think any of us should care because money is not the deal. once you are above the level of basic subsistence and even more than that once you are above lower middle-class levels where people can take care of themselves and their families, united states is doing quite

well for prosperity per-capita. we are thinking our values such that we don't slip in to the malaise of southern european and periphery countries in europe and increasingly easy mainstream european economies are falling into too. most european countries are going wrong way on happiness and prosperity. i think in america we should decide we don't want that. >> host: 202-748-8200. if you nivens east and central time zones 748-8201. if you live out west if you can't get through on the phone lines we have various social media ways of contacting us. lillian boca raton, good afternoon. >> i want to take exception to what mr. bob brooks referred to as the old fashioned method of giving maturity.

he claimed this little woman looks up to the man who gives more. i think if she wants to she can give just as much because we are equal, not unequal and i found some inconsistency when later on, he said that when he is asking for money goes to the widow. i know that women live longer than men, but he has got to look at the marriage or the partnership as equal rather than the little woman looking up to the man. i would like his comments. >> guest: not exactly sure what you are referring to. the truth is i agree with what you said. i am not sure what i said that led you to think that. there is equal worth between all forms of giving, that charity is critically important for all of

a star rich and for have an equal obligation and privilege, the truth is i have written about this extensively in my research that the working for are more generous as percentage of income than any other class of society and they have a lesson for the rest of us and this is critically important. you find women are more generous than men and 10 to be happier than men and live longer than men. maybe this is all correlated. my guess, you have done a lot of things right in your life and you will be rewarded for it and thank you for related. >> host: you might have been referring to the phrase you used when you set widow's mite. >> guest: windows might, a biblical phrase. the it in point of fact it makes lillian's point. the widow who gives a tiny fraction because she is the war in the bible, has great or greater moral worth and the contribution the came from the prince's crown. the prince puts his crown towards the temple, a widow

gives a couple little colin's yet the widow is giving something equally important, more important. i was making her point. >> host: in your first look "who really cares: the surprising truth about compassionate conservatism," you write that people who think government should redistribute income -- let me start again. people who think the government should redistribute income more are less likely to donate to charities and people who don't think so. this is nothing more than substituting political opinions for private donations. >> guest: i was shocked by this. when i started writing "who really cares: the surprising truth about compassionate conservatism" i expected people who express greater compassion for those who have less to be bigger givers but you don't find that to be the case. the more likely you are to say the government should redistribute more income to people who have less, the less likely you are to give away more

of your own income. you have a systematic substitution of political opinions for private charity, that shouldn't be the case in my view. i don't begrudge anybody their political opinion about redistribution from government. i may not agree with that but i understand it. i think people should hold it sincerely. what is the real problem is if you say i voted for politicians who want to redistribute my money away. see how compassionate i am? we have a responsibility to alleviate need. they are not substitute. they should be complementary to each other. >> host: you criticize fdr and his presidency in "who really cares: the surprising truth about compassionate conservatism" saying charitable giving went way down once government program started going that. could that be effective in the 30s and we are in an economic crisis for most of the decade? >> guest: no doubt that is the case but you find that when income goes down, charitable donations go down. that has been the case since

2008 but you also find crowd out. when the government does more individuals do less, that is not an argument for the government not doing something. i don't want anyone watching to misunderstand and think we need to get rid of government programs wholesale. what i and saying it is a call tomorrow action from individuals and not be crowded out. our privilege is to take matters into our own hands notwithstanding what our government does and remembering that is key to our own quality of life and improving quality of life of others. >> host: jeff in cypress, texas. you are on with arthur brooks. >> guest: speaking to the criteria of happiness you mention, faith, family, friends and work i were mind of a great quote by russell kirk who said if you want to have order in the commonwealth you first have to have water in the individual's soul. i am wondering if increase in gross national happiness depends on respiration of traditional

conservatism which russell was the founder of, and whether you see anybody on the horizon right now that is capable of facilitating rather than obviously making this pursuit of happiness a reality. >> you can have somebody coming and quote russell kirk. it is great. absolutely right. all whole idea that markets can do good things for us, free enterprise is outstanding. i believe these things deeply but the pre determinate for that is properly ordered human morality. markets have to come after morality where we have properly -- again, people are going to disagree about what that morality, is down to. markets as opposed to the moral sentiments we are going in the wrong direction, the same way you can say a car makes you a better person. a car is a means to do so just

as markets are means to do so. how do we deal with that? we need politicians and policymakers and community leaders who say we need to be properly upstanding moral, ethical lifestyles such that capitalism can be a good thing for us as a society. adam smith said this in 1759, he wrote the theory of moral sentiments 17 years before the wealth of nations which was his great book about how we understand classical economics today. the theory of moral sentiment said we have to earn freedom as a society on the basis of our ethics. he came back to that book, he was right. we need proper be ordered morals, we need a well ordered lifestyle and at that point if we do this together free enterprise can be an unbounded that blessing for society in setting as free and given as more prosperity. >> host: north carolina, high.

>> caller: good afternoon. as a small businessman i am concerned about this momentum towards higher minimum wage. some place is a living wage which is almost ruinous to small-businesses and i was wondering what your take on it is and is there any movement, any way we can get rid of the minimum wage completely? >> host: what kind of business do you have? >> caller: i have a dog day care. my wife and i had a remodeling business, covering -- we have a lot of businesses and i never in my life paid a minimum wage. i'll wasted people above minimum wage but some of the numbers we are talking about would put my business out of -- i couldn't handle it. i just have found a loss of

people do really well at first if you give them a chance and they get raises really quickly and some people watch out right away. if you had to start everyone at $12 to $15 an hour it would really be difficult. >> guest: great point. let's talk about it from the perspective of the problem with the minimum wage. i don't think anyone should dispute that if you work hard and play by the rules you should be able to support yourself through honest work and support your family. let's agree to that right now. the question is how best to do that. the problem with a minimum wages and even just what you say which is it hurt small businesses although it does. the biggest problem is the herds disproportionately certain parts of the population. you find today for example in minority communities among young men unemployment about 36%. it is just terrible, it is discouraging these communities. who are the people least likely to be hired and most likely to

be laid off when you increase the minimum wage? young minority men. that is an empirical fact. the problem isn't even that it lays off everybody in the minimum-wage pool. it disproportionately hits the people we need to help the most. how do you take that on? when i hear studies that increase the minimum wage by 15% would only have a destructive impact of 2% or 3% on jobs. all concentrated in particular communities and you can soak that up with welfare. everybody watching us today and stand welfare's not a substitute for work. welfare checks can't substitute for paychecks in terms of human dignity and opportunity and that is just a fact. the question is what are we going to do to meet the criteria that people should be able to support themselves through honest work, minimum-wage increase doesn't do it, it hurts certain populations and the answer is you need the policies that make work pay.

a great policy is an expansion of the earned income tax credit. those tarnopol a seat, i congratulate you. let's talk about what that policy does. it is a government subsidy where you through your tax bill you get a tax credit, a check from the fed government, the wage you earn so you have a job you work if you are below certain levels the government will prop up your wage for your tax subsidy is how it works. right now of that is something families get a hold of and it is a successful policy. the problem is simple men the people who need it most, don't have systematic access to this policy and need to expanded the don't increase the minimum wage and force people who are most vulnerable out of the workforce and soak up with welfare. wage subsidy or in income-tax credit expansion that will make work pay for more people. it costs money. conservatives might be rolling their eyes saying this guy talking about spending more

government money, that is what i want the government to do. that is what we should want the government to do. not a boondoggles and wastes of money we do right now, really helped people to get ahead and increase opportunity. we know how to do it, lets just do it. >> host: larry tweets in arthur brooks, with regard to charitable contributions and they write their charitable money off their taxes for pay the tax instead. >> guest: the way the charitable deduction works in america is in 1917, the tax code, the congress said we had public goods we need to pay for. if we have people pay taxes and people like giving money to charities that provide public goods let's have a public/private partnership, allow people to effectively designate their tax bill toward private charities they are paying for.

not $1 for $1, the amount of their tax rate that we are going to let them write off of their tax bill, kind of a moral contract between the government and citizens. it wasn't a loophole or work around endeavors since then, there has been a sense that private citizens should designate their taxes through tax-deductible to that. is not the case being paid for by poor americans. for americans pay virtually no income tax at least at the federal level. social security, property-tax this, consumption taxes but those are not the taxes you can write off when it comes to your tax-deductible charitable contribution. taxes are largely paid by people in the top half so that is where taxes come from. >> host: paul albert tweets in i use the arthur brooks who writes a column for the new york times? >> guest: yes and i am grateful to be able to do it.

it has been a wonderful experience to write for a different community and a different paper the free enterprise movement has been associated with. is a real privilege to do so. >> host: michael machine another tweak, how do you reconcile corruption and influence destroying the free enterprise system? corporations are not people. can you address that argument that is going on? corporations are not people? >> guest: corporations are not people. they don't have a soul. the idea of personhood, corporations have legal designation. that is what we are talking about. nobody should support the idea that corporations should have special powers and privileges, the corporations should have undue access on government and in point of fact the way we set up a system where enormous government which is metastasizing all over the place

where without being politically justified, whether we have pure metastasizing bureaucracy, and give privileges to companies and unions and well organized individuals who have special power all of us should be resentful of that because that hurts ordinary americans. people like me and you can benefit from that. we live in washington d.c. and have powerful friends but we shouldn't even be able to, that is something we should all agree on right and left, that has got to stop. >> host: jonathan in connecticut, you are on with arthur brooks. >> caller: i wonder if you could comment on america's incarceration rate well as to other nations, the rise of privately run prisons and how this impacts happiness in america. thank you. >> host: great question. >> guest: criminal-justice reform should be a major component of the new conservative agenda over the next two years. criminal justice reform is an area where we can make big

strides in improving fairness and having a better opportunity society. we lock them up for a lot of the wrong reasons. the movement toward alternative sentencing, alternative criminal justice methods, everything from drug courts to getting rid of three strike laws, this is the way to go and conservative should be the vanguard of making it so. it was encouraging to me the other day when conservative leaders were writing open letters to the government of taxes for stay on the execution of a profoundly mentally ill schizophrenic man. that is what the conservative movement, a conservative heart should be able to recognize, the wrong way to go in this country no matter your views on the death penalty that is something we can recognize we are going in the wrong direction so this is a big opportunity for better criminal justice system and better conservative movement. >> host: steve in connecticut, go ahead with your question or

comment. >> i think you are just great, but i have talked comment, i am great believer in term limits and you don't hear too much about that. they don't want to give up their cushy jobs and people argue you lose all that experience if you have term limits. i think they should be called every two years and the problems today would disappear if we get rid of these audits and political arena, the campaigns are just ridiculous. thank you very much. >> guest: term limits have been coming up for a long time. the technical aspects, the constitutional aspect i things we don't want to address the there are constitutional difficulties in the first place. at the state level they have been successful. will get florida where members of the florida house are term

limited out. even the speaker of the house is a great young political entrepreneur, will weatherford, is being term limited out. they are serious about this stuff. at the state level it can be a lot of good. the other thing that is a real force for good is a commitment going in from politicians to say i am not going to stay very long to be held to a from the get go. the moral a suasion from private commitments can be every bit as powerful as simply a law for it so the week and understand the moral fiber of people and what their intention is to be with respect to citizen politicians. i don't think their jobs are that cushy quite frankly. i got to become good friends with members of congress and the senate and house and those men and women work like crazy. i know of guy, a friend of mine who is from idaho, a

congressman, imagine going home to idaho every weekend. really tough stuff and he did it because he is a patriot, he wants to help save this country and if he is watching today which i bet he is not, i hope he is, he is saying cushy job? are you kidding me? that might be an overstatement but i take your point and it is a good one. >> host: lisa says i would like to hear mr. brooks's opinions on the appetite of americans for libertarianism today. whether we have a chance of moving that way as a society in the near future perhaps over the next 30 years. >> guest: libertarianism has been a political favorite of 3% of the population. not to say there aren't elements of it that people really like a lot. there are elements on the political left that are pretty appealing, talk about certain civil libertarians in that case but it hasn't really expanded all that much for a few different reasons.

one of them is traditional libertarian is an has been relatively and sympathetic to the way we run our national security policies in this country and those policies in times of natural prices tend to be relatively popular. ..vely popular. so i don't know what the future of libertarianism is going to be. i think it's incredibly important that they played an outside influence on the direction of the country. whether or not they can grow into a kind of movement that has political force i'm not quite sure. my friends at the cato institute are terrific at turning a 3% movement into something that looks like about a much higher percentage of the political influence. >> host: from your book a the battle of the fight between how the free enterprise will shape america's future with its the 70-30 nation that you're talking about? >> guest: was a question

whether we changed in the country. president obama was predicated on the idea that the united states was comfortable being less of a traditional free enterprise country and i don't mean that in a critical way. some people agree with that and some people don't. i'm talking as an analyst at this point looking at the data you find that sympathy for the free enterprise system is always about a 73 go 30 prepositions are you can find the people are willing to question a lot of the practices in the country or willing to let the government step in and provide more of a safety net and solve some of our problems from the method of stimulus good and bad in times of real economic crisis but where are their hearts come in the 70-40 proportions it in in a society that's towards the free enterprise. this actually makes the point that you made a little bit earlier that there is a conflict here. we are becoming a democracy but emotionally we are in a 70-30

nation. that could look like a sort of detachment from reality and what that is is an opportunity. if our hearts are one place, that our country is one place else, we need to follow our heart. what what does it mean to reflect our deepest values in the enterprise system it is the reason that our ancestors came here. yours and mine, our great-grandparents we are not steaming into the harbor saying things are dying in america to get a system of the forced income redistribution. they were here for the freedom to be rewarded for their hard work and that is that he does we can get back when it's still written on our heart so the great majority of americans that we want for ourselves and our kids and especially the poor to give them the freedom and opportunity to lift themselves up. >> host: are we unique as a nation >> guest: we are pretty unique. not entirely and i have great hope for all parts of the world. when i see -- i went to india

and i love it i tell you it's totally inspirational. it's my favorite place to go when the whole world. i spent as research on the book i'm writing right now i spend half of the day in a huge slum just like in the middle of mumbai. when you go to the slum you're going to see begging, depression, illness, poverty. at the thing that strikes you the most is busyness. you see people that are just working. and i'm not a guy who's job is sorting used toothbrushes to recycle. you can say she shouldn't have to do that but the point is he is doing that. that's the kind of post that you would think about as your ancestors in the united states doing and i want to sort out the poverty. don't get me wrong it's important to upgrade that lets

recognize the prosperity for the whole world is started with the american model and now we are seeing these american values of faith, community and work and that's something that we want to inculcate. that said this is the country that showed the way and that should still show the way to the rest of the world. >> host: falls river massachusetts. >> caller: i'm a longtime fan. reading 700 page book the reef formation -- d. formation of american capitalism and he really skewers the new deal about johnson and especially nixon and reagan and even bush and obama and bernanke. so i was wondering if you could get a book review of this because he really takes off on them.

>> host: david stockman is a brilliant guy. he is as smart as anybody that i've ever met quite frankly. he has a strong point of view. and it is a 700 page volume. this isn't a beach read my friends but it is worth reading because he had a strong point of view about how we fix the country. it's a strong view that we were selling out the future and that step-by-step we have worked in this ratchet toward the social democracy and it is a point that is undisputably true. this is not an opinion. it's something the right and left should agree on. the question is whether it is bad or the downfall of america and this is where the arguments are going to come in. they will say it's a good thing that the government is doing more and that we are sucking up more gdp in the government services because this is how we can have a more civilized society. they can say it has happened but it isn't the case that all of this is going to have to happen and the safety net is a good

thing that's written along with the lbj reforms and policies. i recommend david's book because i'm going to learn about one of the polar views in this debate. >> host: robey posts you briefly mentioned in one of your answers that the u.s. should reform the foreign policy. could you please expand on that and explain how and why does foreign policy should be modified and what effect it may have on the influence the u.s. may directly or indirectly have in the world? >> guest: it's co it's easy to talk about free enterprise to be sure, but when we talk about how america is going to be a gift to the world lets talk about how they are kind of the same and this will give the sense of how we can reform foreign-policy.

if you understand how foreign-policy has changed the world of the leave it or not look at china. they played 650 million people out of poverty. how? the answer isn't central planning or the authoritarian regime. it's not the nightmare civil rights problem in the country. it's a movement towards capitalism and particularly toward trade in the left and the united states. what has made that possible? it is made possible by doping the ceilings in the global comments. it is a pacific that hasn't been run by militarism for the first time in recent history were even over the past several centuries. that is because of american military power. that's an idea americans will patrol the global comments. and in so doing it can help set people free all around the world. we need a foreign policy that understands if we that we are the hyperpower we have to act

like one and a hyperpower has to be able to be militarily sound, capable, have a strong foreign-policy that understands the art a unique nation and the willing and able to share our values with people around the world that are ready to absorb these ideas and that means intervention and a sense of internationalism but most importantly i know people are going to disagree but here's what we should agree on we need a foreign policy. it's not okay that we have a chaotic sense of leading from behind and that is basically a foreign-policy of looking busy. that isn't going to get us where we need to go. we need a foreign-policy end of the ideas i laid out at the beginning or the basis. >> host: arthur brooks is the guest president of the american enterprise institute and author of several books on public policy. catskill new york. >> caller: good morning. thank you for c-span.

the leave me. two questions if i may or would like to have you defended the social security tax cap if you can't and i would also like you to comment on the sad fact that if you're in modern times both parents need to work in almost every situation. the friends i have every couple has had to have both parents working. >> i recommend the work of my colleagues who writes in "the wall street journal" a lot and he has the best voice on this. one of the things he helps us understand is that it isn't just make the tax regressive and get a pass to rich people. it was set up by fdr originally as a forced savings program, not as a pay-as-you-go program. it's that senior citizens at the time were disproportionately indigent after they were retired because they were working, they were not able to work and so

their incomes into their incomes were way down. incorrectly the economists correctly identified at an insufficient savings was the corporate culprit and associated okay let's take the first part and impose a tax on it. we are actually taking it is what the government is more likely doing. but the idea is right and forced savings along the lines. so it is a tax that is supposed to make sure that everybody saves a certain amount, that everybody has a base amount. then you have a formula you get more than a few are richer. on the second question about the earners and every household at the structure in the economy changed a lot since i was a kid. you have more rewards that come from higher education and the result is if you don't have an

educational attainment level that is following the new economy you will be making less per hour and this is a structural change in our economy and we should have this earned income tax credit for the working poor can make ends meet without taking second and third jobs and having to go on public assistance. we need to find better ways to create for human dignity and then we need a long-term solution that improves human capital in the country. we have a public education system that's suitable for the 1950s. it hasn't changed very much since my parents were children. you need an education system that has twice and has innovations and understands we need to improve people in poor communities disproportionately and we need education reform. this is a huge struggle for this country so let's have policies that make work pay writenow and let the policies that improve

human capital. >> host: is there a politician out there that is speaking some of the ideas that you are espousing? >> i see a lot of politicians at the state and local level that are aspirational. they are visionaries along these lines and the key thing politicians have to have is if they want to get these things right it why he of the work and the faith of the person that they were trying to help the most. what we need in america is a left and right that are more entrepreneur. if we do that than we are going to see a lot of these ideas and to say i have a better idea on how to do criminal justice reform, education reform, deregulation and how to create more jobs and have an energy boom. i want want a right and left to be fighting over these ideas as opposed to not effectively colluding to ignore poor people that happens in the conversations that we have

today. so, a lot of state and local people are very promising and we are going to see on the national scene in five to ten years. >> host: any names you want to name? >> guest: i just named one in florida. he's really fantastic and i see a lot of people in some of the state committed to texas, florida, arizona. you are going to find some of these places where they have nonconventional views along the lines. some of the presidential candidates are interesting. some of the governors running for president on the republican side are willing to wind up. i like a lot of what we are seeing. some people might get in the race. really interesting stuff is going on in indiana. bob, bobby jindal, people are people so you can say 100% of what somebody's doing is great but these are people that had some pretty interesting ideas.

>> host: david e-mails research has shown that some traditional democratic voting groups tend to be more risk adverse than others may be. this makes sense in that democratic economic possibilities often feature protection. >> sure. if you offer people more security come you're going to find that you're going to attract people that like security. there's nothing weird about that. but there's a deeper consideration which is that when people are poor, the stakes are higher on losing what they've got and so they are going to be a lot more worried. if you are living from paycheck to paycheck it isn't going to take that much time before you are homeless and you're going to care more about the policies that make you more secure. this is a natural and a normal thing. so they can avail themselves of the system of opportunity enhancement. again they are politicians one of the best people ever heard on

this issue. he talks about the right to rise and is comfortable with the safety net that can take care of a lot of the security concerns, economic security concerns come in and takes things very seriously about the bias and opportunity for poor people. >> host: the national review in a couple of different essays put part of the blame on the deck in new york on the fact that new york regulates the sale of cigarettes, so heavily. >> guest: we talk to the criminal justice reform. i think a lot of the conservatives and liberals are coming together beyond that. i mean it is too simplistic to say that death was the death was due to the cigarette tax. you can find all of these we are secondary causes. what we do know is that right and left a lot of people are coming together to talk about the way that the police are trained and kill the particular issues and everybody regrets that. one more point to make on that

and any of the cases i don't have answers but i will tell you if we have a society that had more opportunity for everybody including the 36%, taking care of the 36% unemployment problem for young minority men, that we would have a lot fewer of these types of problems. opportunity is the key to solving a lot of these problems. >> host: the next call comes from cheryl in claremont. >> thank you for taking my call. i just had one question. have one question. what specific structural policy changes can be implemented so all people will be treated as they want to be treated? >> the structural policy reasons i wish i could say that here is the one policy that would make everybody understand that every single person as a child of is a child of god and is equal to moral worth. the reason i can't do that is that isn't policy. there are policies we need like

equal treatment in the law. that's language from the declaration of independence to be sure and it wasn't even brought to the full provision and we got rid of the slavery and women have the right to vote and other things so we need to make that a reality every single day that fundamentally that is anti-policy question it's a cultural question. fundamentally, we need cultural and moral renewal in this country when we remember why this is an exceptional nation and why we were founded, so each of us is a warrior until each of us understands every single person truly is a child of god and equal in the eyes of god we are not going to get the job done is what it comes down to. so i would suggest that our viewers in each of us consider ourselves moral revolutionaries revolutionaries as much of policy revolutionaries. >> host: tom, montgomery alabama. good afternoon.

i was wondering how religion fits into your happiness index. you mentioned that we were animals and the last time i checked they didn't have a soul so i would like to know your idea on that. >> guest: sure. again, the four basic elements of a happy life life for faith and family can faith and family can community and work and you can interpret it however you like because the truth is when i look at it and hear a clean i it clear i have the views as a roman catholic, but you can interpret it according to the data which is to say that traditional and nontraditional views bring happiness to people. the key is not ignoring the transcendental forces in life, not becoming a pure materialist. that is the key thing that matters the most. i spent a lot of time in india and people are deeply satisfied with their lives. there were a lot of very

religious people of a different religion than i have but i would suggest that simply as a social scientist it's very difficult to ignore the elements of life because in doing so you focus way too much on materialism. one of the things i write about is the formula that comes from the materialistic modern life that tells us how to live a good life is exactly wrong. the formula is used people and love things. >> host: from your book the book to battle the fight between how big government and free enterprise will shape america's future and a poor man at the bp successfully created something of value would be much better off than the rich man who is not earned his success. the big problem isn't that people have less money than others, that it is that they

have less earned success. >> guest: it is one of the key concepts of how it works. one of the reasons honest work is incredibly important to human dignity, again if you fall below subsistence all of the bets are off. safety net matters and a society that can lift people up to the point plate is critically important as anybody that says it's okay to be poor i have this friend who teaches at marquette university and just to be the superintendent he grew up poor and he was saying the other night money doesn't matter. he says they are always rich. i tell you what to give me your money and i will let you know. once we get above the level of being able to support ourselves money doesn't bring very much happiness at all. it's the feeling that you are creating value with your life in a value in the lives of other people, that's it. so if you want to bring people into force, think what can they

do today to make it more possible for people to earn their success. what am i doing today to give people a sense of worth so they can create more human capital in the education committee job where they can separate themselves and their families and where the skills and passion can actually meet. don't dismiss the jobs as a dead-end jobs and put them on public assistance. that is the wrong thing to do because that was a way of success and away from happiness. >> host: preston in denver colorado. >> guest: i just felt the need to share on your facebook page some thoughts in the defense of government. i hear a lot of kind of the demeaning of our government. and people like ralph nader think that actually is big business that is the major problem right now. and also, regarding his assertion that we don't have a foreign-policy, i think we have

one. we had a worse one under bush and a lot of the aei scholars were supporters of the invasion of iraq and i think they owe the people of iraq and apology for devastating the country and i was wondering if you had a response to that. >> guest: i appreciate your view. there's a lot for me to disagree with. i'm glad you your point of view deeply however. on the question of iraq, apology is due to the citizens trying to bring their lives that have been since devastated by the lack of foreign-policy and the invasion of isis. that was an unforced error on the part of a non- foreign-policy from the united states. so i think all of the data support, but what i'm saying here, you can -- anybody can legitimately go back and forth. it had to be finished and it wasn't in a rush to get out and

what i think was the lack of the foreign-policy. the the people or something trying to get on with their lives and their families as they an apology to the iraqi people it's because of that. >> host: if you're interested on seeing what he has come facebook.com/booktv. he posted an article from government is good and one from slate as well and the article is headlined why are they investing in happiness. have you read this article plaques >> guest: everybody should invest in happiness. everybody investing in happiness and the forces of happiness in their life and i think it's great to great that philanthropists are thinking

about not just happiness but the deeper things. i think it's great. i think george soros as well as david coke should invest in happiness because i think it is a worthy thing to have a good discussion as a country. >> host: every month we asked one author to come on this program can take your calls, take your e-mail comments etc. but we also ask the author his or her favorite books in the biggest and biggest influences and what he or she is reading now. here are some of the arthur brooks answers. ♪ ♪ ♪

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>> host: arthur brooks, one of her favorite people in the biggest influences, charles murray. >> guest: a scholar at the american enterprise institute who has written voluminously on so many different topics. he wrote the first book about welfare reform. charles murray's work ended up going back to, you know, i think that we talked about this quite a lot. the book is called losing ground. it is written in 1984, and it basically made this one profound point. charles murray said the problem in the welfare system is not that it wastes so much money, which invaded rules the life of the people that we are trying to help by making them permanently dependent on the state. this is such an important point that people agree left and right and it is beyond contention at this point. he has a visionary ability to

get some major ideas across and it is a privilege to be working with him. >> host: it was pretty controversy over when you go to the bell curve. >> guest: the essential point of the bell curve, the controversy is that these were some of the work that he did where he talked about the differences with respect to race, but that wasn't his central point. the central point that he was making is the class is disproportionately starting to revolver out of the difference is people have in their ability to perform cognitively and that the class society is immoral and un-american and it's hurting the way that we are setting up our country. so that was the central point that he was trying to make in the book. the book that he's coming apart in 2012 which didn't look at race at all if looked at only the differences only on one side which was white america. the reason he did that was to not look at race and to say we are organizing in a way that is leaving the bottom behind. we need to bring the fullness of

american society and opportunity. we need to do that more aggressively. >> host: numbers are on the screen if you want to talk to our guest. president of the american enterprise institute and the author of these policy books. who really cares, the surprising truth about the compassionate conservatism, it came out in 2006. gross national happiness. why happiness matters for america and how we can get more out of that came out in 2008. the battle how the fight between big government and free enterprise will shape america's future into the road to freedom is the most recent account to win the fight for free enterprise that came out in 2012. you also list is in friedman and saint john paul to as some of your favorite people are biggest influences. >> guest: these are economical fingers if you think of john paul the great, john paul to the

great pope. he's helped us understand a better rule today because he's been of the central figures about bringing down. as the head of the roman catholic church was responsible for reminding people around the world of human dignity was not consistent with communism whether they be catholics, kris chaps or religious people orre n not, human dignity is human dignity. >> host: this e-mail from mark, the middle east is where the u.s. doesn't belong. since napoleon, the west has caused more issues than solved. we can assist, not solve.

>> guest: i disagree. i think that the middle east -- i think people would have saida that about many places in the world that are currently in thea process of development around democratic principles.ent now, people are at a different point in the democratic process, to be sure, and to go into any part of the world and assume that they're -- at the point of their development for democratic capitalism the same as we are today, could be a mistake. . they don't have the potential to develop policies whether the minorities are not systematically repressed where you can have a religious pluralism that's a mistake it's not just -- it is a mistake historically. we have to have good policy but

i also believe that we need to be optimistic. >> host: what is your initial reaction? >> guest: my initial reaction is that he says a lot of different things. and as a presidential candidate he has to be sort of every place i think that -- i would like to welcome him to aei. >> host: has he ever spoke their? >> guest: he is a smart guy and it's a good stage for him. >> host: i'm going to combine his because they are semi-related to the philosophically related. number one is free enterprise would allow the churches or organizations to operate

tax-free followed by the minimum wage versus the tax loophole for the rich. >> guest: that is exactly right. it doesn't mean that you should before the minimum wage because again it's not >> 's it's the biggest rays drops for the most vulnerable and we have a better policy. that is inconsistent with what the framers of the current policies believe. the belief that religious communities are part of a good society they are a public good and so therefore it is a nonprofit activity. they are not everybody else has to agree with that but that is the philosophy that motivated in the first place. >> we don't need a term limits for politicians. we need term limits for the abuse of the abusive to the abuse of think that enjoyed lifetime appointments. >> guest: again, one of the

things -- i understand the sentiment. i get it. washington, d.c. i'm sometimes outraged as well. i know a lot of people work for the government who have done so for a very long time and they are faithful public servant working really hard. one of the great things the right has made his prescribing bureaucrats as necessarily lazy or incompetent. if you do that, do no good servants will go into public service and if you do that you will get a left-wing bureaucratic apparatus forever. i think that we have to recognize the public service is a good and dignified thing to do. of course there are great recent bureaucracies and their cuts. there is waste, fraud and abuse ridden through the government. there's a lot we need to do to reform it, but i need more, smart, principled and conservative people to consider careers in government so that we can have a better point of view

that isn't just simply another progressive constituency. and that is one of the biggest problems america faces. >> host: your book wrote it to freedom is wonderful and i really appreciate your having produced an audio book area i commute three hours a day and listen to it twice. freedom comes first, even before justice. >> guest: a three-hour commute i hope that isn't too many miles so you're not sitting in traffic and you get a little bit of freedom your self. there are a lot of people that honestly be the. but honestly be the. when you look at the american policy, the values they are basically three. exigency, justice or fairness and freedom or liberty.

and the truth of the matter is that you can't load on one or more of these things. we want all three but certain people pay for some over the others. we need public policies that respect the different values that people have and we all want fairness and belief efficiency is a good thing but it's critically important. their voices tend to be on the libertarian side. so understanding those differences help us to be a little bit more tolerant and people that disagree than people that disagree with us thanks for helping us read the book. >> host: you mention you are working on a fifth book. >> guest: it will be called the conservative park the whole idea is the vision of human foraging. a human movement that puts people first especially vulnerable people first. it will talk about the sanctification of ordinary work. it will talk about a new policy that a a policies for improving

the lives of people that are poor in the cultural bias on the political right are people that are poor and it will talk about a better life for everybody for their families and happiness. this is what the conservative heart is all about and the conservative movement has fallen down by talking about economic efficiency and materialism too much. and thinking about how to share it with more people than how to be more pluralistic pluralistic in our view is and how more explicitly moral in our language about id. and opportunity is the way to go. so i'm hoping to have some sort of an impact on the policymakers and on the citizens and bring us all together around these humanistic values that can lift other people up. >> host: so you are leaving after four books. >> guest: basic has been very wonderful to me, but i that i went to or collins mainly because my editor is adam bellow can use the son of the great author. he is one of the most storied editors in the movement.

and i always wanted to work with him. >> host: john in new york city you are wrong with arthur brooks. >> caller: thank you very much to c-span and mr. brooks i appreciate your views especially on the poor. two quick questions. do you ever still play around with both mozart come and number two, you hear politicians talking abut the need for tax breaks for the job creators and then the ball straight journal reports on how many large corporations like wal-mart can have their employees don't make enough to live on and they have to go on public assistance and food stamps and i know you were on this earned income tax credit

but what about the people that are going to pay their employees on how much to? thank you. >> guest: on mozart, first i don't play anymore and the reason i don't play the horn anymore if i'm out of shape and i don't have the chops for it. so i listen a lot, particularly with my kids i enjoy great music and i enjoy other people's suffering while they play music more than i enjoy my own self suffering through a lot of these great pieces. when it comes to paying a fair wage, i understand the sentiment. what can i see corporations that make a lot of money. while the executives coming at me have employees that are really on the edge. the problem that we see is what a lot of the corporations, they are hiring people that have a hard time earning in value more than that. that is the reason that as a society we need to be able to say that we want to improve the capacity of people to create value. we don't want to pretend people

are creating more value than they are. we want them to create more value. the way to do that is through capital enhancement, better education and the near-term eking working more as a contract with us as americans. now, that is good to come from everybody. it's disproportionately going to come from the corporations because they pay the most taxes and that is okay. but if we actually go to the corporations and say from now on you have to pay coming yes but some of these guys they don't create much value. it's not going to hire them and nothing that we do in a free society is going to make them want these people more. and so that is the practical problem that we need to solve and that's what i'm going to get into. other corporations that only hire people that do create more value from the get-go they pay a lot more than the minimum wage. the pioneer organizations in the area is hobby lobby pushes and super famous because of that. but hobby lobby is paying 12 to $15 hour to start on us or you can do that you will be hiring

different workers. and we want to make sure that everybody is capable of creating more value. and that should be the kind of moral goal that we have in society. >> host: you have to be in good shape to play the french foreign? >> guest: your lips have to be in good shape. spend a couple of months not playing it pretty soon you're not going to sound so good. >> guest: i was happy in barcelona because i was in love. i chased the woman that i meant when met tonight is when i was playing a concert on the tour in france, she didn't speak any english but i figured she wasn't french, she was from barcelona. and i went to barcelona and a half% because i didn't show enough commitment she would agree to marry me. the good news. there was a great source of happiness and a singular source of joy in my life.

playing at the orchestra was not really my cup of tea. it sounds like the best job ever but the trouble is when you play in the symphony orchestra you lack a lot of control. it is pure social control. and i have a tendency to have a trouble with authority so it wasn't the best job for me. >> host: at about the atmosphere of barcelona. are the people have the? >> guest: spain is one of the unhappiest and it's been going the wrong direction for 25 years. spain is less happy than they were 25 years ago. some of the stereotypes that we have the lighthearted hippie standards are actually wrong and there are a bunch of different reasons for that. a member to the family, community and work in the foregoing are wrong direction on all four, particularly work. 26% unemployment and 56% from 56% for young adults. that is just young people trying

to be in the workforce to look for jobs. this is the recipe for misery. you have a secularized society that has been hugely socialistic taking away a lot of opportunities. the result has been bad macroeconomic policies, and the environment that isn't very noble for citizens, for the talent and passion they don't meet very well in the workforce and the result is if they think the standards are happier than they actually are. it's a lot of reform that needs to happen in the country to get them on the right track. >> host: the phone lines are currently jammed but if you would like to ask a question on social media booktv is the better handle. you can make a comment on the facebook page facebook.com/mac book tv. and finally you can send him e-mail at c-span.org. thanks for holding. you are on with arthur brooks. >> caller: i was going to comment about wal-mart also and

i don't know why the united states is ground for the company like wal-mart to pay their workers so low while the owners are billionaires and the taxpayer subsidizes their workers when they can very much afford to pay their workers decently. and when the last gentleman talked about that, i don't believe arthur brooks addressed why the working man taxpayer and working woman in taxpayer has to subsidize the other businesses like that. and please come address this specific thing. by the united states is a ground for that. and also, why after the colony collapsed, all since then have gone to 1% of the population. why is it ground for the feudal

system? >> guest: i wish i lived in a place called limerick or sonic or something like that. i lived in bethesda. the wal-mart question isn't whether or not the owners of the large stockholders and the executives make a lot of money. they do. and if they choose to give to charity i think it's great and important and i hope they do. the key is remembering if you start out a lot of those come in the income that they had it will make hardly a dent in the workforce that ends up to the millions. what we need is the workforce where they are creating more value for wal-mart comes from the get-go they can be earning a higher wage. so, instead of trying to put all of our energy towards forcing our corporations to spread around more money, which would inevitably lead to cutting off more jobs for people that are marginal in the value that they are creating to find a way for people to create more value and in the meantime, let's end from the tax revenues find ways to

make more and pay more to the people that are going to pay a vast majority of the taxes are rich people and corporations can and that's okay. i think is as a public contract we should be able to do that. >> host: which of your books have sold the best? >> guest: the road to freedom was on the bestseller list for a while and i'm grateful to that. i'm grateful for that. and some others were sort of surprising. the first commercial book that i wrote, which is actually the fifth book that i wrote i guess it is a good one who cares about the charity a professor at syracuse university. i wrote a stick book and found myself in the radio on television and people bought it and in relatively large numbers changed very abruptly. if someone were to pick up one of her books which one would you recommend? >> guest: i favorite book, and

they were not written by me. the favorite book that i've written that meant us to be as gross happiness. it didn't sell the most, but it's one that i -- i learned a lot about with my own personal values are. the book i'm writing right now is sort of closest to how i see the world and what i think we can do to make a better world together as a social contact. >> host: wayne is in, not iowa. hello. are you with us? i think he's gone. let's try telling an albuquerque >> caller: yes, hello. thank you for taking my call. and i was going to ask something else that he keeps using this phrase "creating more value."

as the clerks in wal-mart aren't really creating value of the way that it's structured and they get paid it certainly seems to deny the value that they are giving and doing and doing their jobs. and the phrase, creating more value, it sounds like a think tank phrase for me. we've used it many times. i haven't counted it, but i do not think that it's really articulate. so if you could talk to that and also reparations for people who are definitely enslaved in the country that created value. >> guest: creating value may sound like a think tank, that it may have some correlations between the two. when i talk about value, we can talk about economic value and

non- economic value. when i took that earned success, i don't mean making money. that isn't what i mean at all. creating value with your life and the lives of other people which is a deeply moral thing to do. i don't think that there is any difference whatsoever between the guy that runs the hedge fund and somebody that trims hedges. on the contrary, anybody that believes that there is any value difference in the deep oral value between anybody that is an honest days work in any java versus any other is on the wrong track. and that is the reason by the way. i heard the vice president on national tv talk about the dead-end jobs. it offended me so much coming initiative and everybody that is watching us today. we should reject that. there are no dead-end jobs. there are dead-end politicians. there is a dead-end culture committed and policies but there are no dead end jobs because there are no dead-end people. if you are giving an honest days work it is critically important. that's why i want policies.

again, take away the idea that somehow we are going to browbeat organizations. let's be practical. we know that people on the work and honest day of work they should be able to support themselves and their families. we all agree on that. the question is how do we make it so. we have policies that can get it done. but we are not doing it because we are trying to score political points. so let's fight for working people. let's fight for the poor. let's implement the policies that will actually get that done, which incidentally will also be disproportionately paid for by rich people and corporations. what do today and we will see tremendous progress in the social justice in america. >> host: crazy e-mails to you has a solution for the high cost of a college education? do you need a college education to get a job, please do not tell me manufacturing jobs are coming back. >> guest: manufacturing jobs are not coming back. manufacturing is a good percentage of the value of the

american economy than it was 30 years ago but it is one eighth of the jobs. you are right. it's just less job intensive as a part of the economy. education is critically important coming, and we need a couple of different reforms. ..

>> guest: thomas edison state college in new jersey which was, i did my whole college degree by correspondence and finished when i was about 30 which i mentionem a little bit earlier.e if it hadn't been for that little competition, i wouldn't have been able to go to college. sor. i have a very deep, personp reason for wanting alternativede paths for different people thati will exert downward pressure on the tuition rate for traditional colleges as well glssments paul e-mails in two questions, i was surprised to see mr. brooks challenge the conservative orthodoxy of the beneficial influence of corporations on politics. what should be done to address the oversized influence of money in politics?ce >> guest: i am not as worried as a lot of people are about the, what money is actually doing in politics. what i want is a lot of transparency. i want people to actually know what's going on, and i want mor people -- i want, actually, less of the weird regulations that i

help certain people but don'td help others. help others. i think there is a lot to be said for free speech have manifested the way repay for politics, but we should actually understand who is paying for what. in the political process we can get with more transparency that would be good for the process. >> host: paul second question. economists say for everyone in the world to live like americans, it would require three or four more planets. is the american system, the american standard of living scalable? >> guest: it is. the american system is scalable. there's a lot of facts that were really surprising to people. if you make within $34,000 a year, you are the global 1%. people don't actually recognize that. virtually everyone watching us today from the global 1%. you may not get to that standard for more people around the world? of course not. that's ridiculous.

they would be written off for data and are now making $9000.10000 a year. places like baby yet that are tremendous success stories have been able to get ahead without the idea will consume all the resources. until relatively recently, historically, several hundred years ago, the truth is it either had more money, arthur would have less. free enterprise made a positive somewhat where peter can a positive somewhat where peter can have more anarchic enough war. should reduce sustainably? of course. we can do well to think simultaneously. we have a strong ethical economy and we all can be more prosperous together. that is the lesson of the free enterprise system. a couple of quick facts. when i was a kid in 1970 compared to today, the percentage of the worlds world's population living on a dollar or day less, 70% of americans think

there's more hunker the world then there was the 70s. it's completely wrong. 80% decline in the poverty. the reason for that was not the united nations for the world bank for the imf. good institutions are bad. people disagree on that. was five things. it was globalization, free trade, property rights, the rule of law and american-style entrepreneurship is spread around the world after 1970. these are facts. now what are we going to do as good stewards and global brotherhood to bring that to more people. instead of saying we all have tickets and less, we all have to live under more austerity as if there was a solemn, a set amount of sources that we can never go beyond. that is wrong. prosperity can grow when more people can come out of poverty and we have a moral obligation to do it to serve fellow man. this is the optimistic vision that the american system should

bring in liberals and conservatives should band together on sr compact of global brotherhood of people around the world. >> host: chris, huntsville, alabama. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hello, gentlemen. how are you doing? thank you for c-span. mr. burks, i just want to tell you that i am a fan of milton friedman as well. i read several of his books have watched a lot of black-and-white from back in the day when he was talking about the economy. in the middle eastern country as well as india. he weighs showing how an economy can be with people working together. how could we bring that blueprint from that kind of world to the ghetto in the ghetto in low-income parts of this country and put it in that we can do with a argument over

there was little or nothing. >> host: chris, what do you do in huntsville? >> guest: construction mainly, but due to the weather it is kind of slow right now. >> host: what attracted you to milton friedman? >> caller: basically the way that if the system can help people that don't have a voice economically, that it benefits all and it is something that is good. you don't have to worry about dependent on welfare and food stamps because we can do for ourselves. >> guest: thank you, chris. how was it that we have world development policies that are so good and potentially rwanda or transition economies, but where so much trouble and around cities. for that matter in rural areas that i left behind as well.

the key things to remember or we know how to create prosperity. we know how to do that. you need work and unique human capital and culture. that is what you really need. you need a work culture that embraces the values that we are all created equally and created a sql and that we could all create value again. i use it again so our viewers keeping a word count. i said it again. we need a culture where we have a political system where politicians are warriors for job creation. this is one of the things i like about governors because governors are crazy -- i just create a 7000 jobs. they will run down the street if they can get 7000 jobs to come to their state. what will they do more of? before my feet hit the floor every morning, i say what am i going to do for the government system is in the way of that.

when a debate bias job creation and unique human capital. i think it is holding people back that they are being discriminated against when it comes to having good schools and equal access to education. it is not right in this country that we have too many places where school systems around for nearly for the benefit of grown-ups enough for kids. it is absurd we are doing that. california were 52% is spent on education yet you have one of the highest and fastest growing poverty rates in the nation. we actually can if we have a bias for work on a healthy culture and for training cave for training kate doesn't matter their basic civil rights. post go arthur brooks, sometimes the 7000 jobs that a politician creates, tax incentives, tax breaks come in maybe free something or others. is that an effective way to

create jobs? >> guest: i am always in favor of finding the way for government to take less money. i know the government needs the revenue. but when there's competition with respect to taxes between states, that's a good team because i'm that there's more economic value being created privately, which is better for the economy, which if things work right better for everybody. when there is cronyism however that's a problem. special deals come in the special industries where they're able to get a leg up on their competition here that is struggling a problematic and that's what a lot of states with you. bring your source to my area. your competition will have to pay taxes, but you are. that is cronyism and unfair and bad for workers, bad for economies and bad for government as well. post of those types of incentives, which classified those as you do in "the road to freedom" with government activity? >> guest: yeah, i want tax

regimes more favorable to everybody that create a magnetism for economic activity is supposed to targeted tax breaks for individuals. >> host: fargo, north dakota. as an atheist as mr. brooks suggests that makes it to be happy. atheists and people of faith may or may not be happy for various reasons. freedom from religion would improve my chances of happiness. post go i would recommend religion. he's an atheist but he understands the beneficial impact of spirituality in everybody's life. as an atheist you are not for close to the same benefits that i is a practicing christian look at. good luck. thanks for your question. >> host: larry, centralia, washington. good afternoon to you. >> caller: thank god for c-span and booktv. my favorite weekend programming. my question for dr. brooks. the heritage foundation versus

aei, can you compare the two against each other and the second question would be as it the opinion of the citizens united decision in the mail a request for donations from my party. i quit sending anything because it's just like adding a cup of water to the pacific ocean compared to citizens united. >> host: larry, we will get that. if you could share your opinion or what you know about aei and the heritage foundation, what you think. >> caller: when i watch c-span and anytime there's someone on heritage foundation selling a book or some thing, the far right wing i can sit through the whole program. in order to said during his tenure as secretary of state,

the job at a e i. not sure about that. >> host: we will get arthur brooks's views. >> guest: i love beautiful centralia, washington. i have been through here and driven to my grandparents' house for my childhood. i know it well. their heritage foundation has been around since the 1970s. 8 e i is more academic than the heritage foundation. the heritage foundation is more formation will for the conservative movement. they had a different functions throughout the years. i have been a donor to both for a long time. they do different things. the e i, my institution doesn't have corporate policy. the views i am giving today are not the official views of a e. i. because it doesn't have any official views. we have 70 full time scholars and 140 staff on top of that and they have their own views so it is more like a universities and it is like a lot of policy

advocacy organizations. there are views that are central to the corporation and they are effective, quite different along these lines. >> host: colin powell, dick cheney associated with it. >> guest: a wonderful book came out, biography of madison, the best biography of james madison. it tells us something about what a great and independent thinker can help us all remember the original conception of what it meant to be an american dreamer from the get go. >> host: has down not hold been involved? >> guest: she hasn't but lynn cheney and a lot of big public figures were privileged to get involved throughout the years. >> host: larry asked about the citizens united case. >> guest: the citizens united case is something, legitimate disagreement, doesn't necessarily bother me we have

more about competition of money between them. someone sending in $75 checks is going to be a smaller percentage than the sum that goes into a. they have an opportunity to affect the debate in different ways. i might note a good thing to do is support think tanks, let me tell you a $75 check does make a difference. >> host: fisher, facebook page, mr. brooks, warren buffett and bill gates have some much as stated reformers of our tax system should look to taxing us when we spend wulff, not when it is earned. talks about the fair tax act. >> guest: a consumption tax is a sensible thing. for those who watch, look at low website think tanks, recommend going to aei.org and look at our tax policy specialist who has written about consumption taxation, the x tax. you don't have to pay taxes on

the money you save but when you take money out and spend it the amount you consume you have to pay tax on it and you don't want a bias against could poor people who consume more than they save by having appropriate ways of protecting poor people from taxation but it is a sensible way to design hartack system. if we did that we would see the stronger economic growth. >> host: greta posts on our face book page you should run for president in 2016 if for no other reason than to get your message before the public. >> guest: thank you. is america ready for a bold president? i think not. >> host: gerald in kent, washington outside seattle. >> caller: i was wondering if you have any insight or of review or thoughts on the dividend fund in alaska with particular revenues and dispersed dividends every year. pretty intriguing they have kept this going so many years.

>> host: what do you think of it? >> caller: i think it is pretty good. is the government handling the people's resources and returning it to the demand is amazing they can invest in come up with profits. >> guest: the key to that is unique to the board of red big natural resource, and very few citizens per square mile and have the task never turn off. it is hard to scale the whole united states. saudi arabia has done that, and in on free countries it is the kiss of death quite frankly. and in on free countries what you find is supporting populations and the basis of modern success but natural resources could be dangerous but fortunately in america we can do better and alaska has shown it doesn't have to be terrible. >> host: ronald is calling from indiana. are you associated with produce?

>> yes i am. >> host: what do you do? >> i am a graduate student in ecological science and engineering. >> host: please go ahead. wikipedia >> caller: 9 appreciate your comments. i am thinking about distribution and supply and demand. how do you think gross national happiness would approve if everyone had access to highly nutritious food and how do you think the american food system would be affected if government support for food programs like snap and soybeans were replaced by credit for farmers or free enterprise and see what happens? >> host: what are your thoughts first? >> guest: i don't know. there is the large debate about replacing the food programs, especially food stamps which take up 80% of the usda program

bills. technical lead the fda is part of the supply and demand side and if you just remove, it is pretty difficult. if you remove it from same people who are growing corn and soybean which is easily shipped would be the same people growing fruits and vegetables because it is difficult to grow friedan vegetables for a large country like this. >> host: what do you hope to do with your degree in ecological science? >> caller: continue research. it is difficult to work on the what and how when you don't account for the why, a lot of interdisciplinary research in the future. a social scientist to think about each active research is fundamentally political in a constrained world. >> guest: you are the expert on this and i learned from hearing you talk and appreciate it very

much, one thing i want viewers to know is ronald said what and how are important but why is critical. that is true in every area of policy. is true for each of us to think about why we are doing what we are doing. this is such a big deal in policy works that i believe is central to the work we do at aei. in the face of food security absolutely true, we should have social entrepreneur is working more and more for basic food and water security for people all over the world and doing that would be an unambiguously good thing because it would lead to more global prosperity and human accomplishment. people who are starving who have nutritional needs simply cannot earn their success so that is a good thing to do. in the united states food security through the snap program is critically important. there's no data to dissuade me from the idea we should be cutting or fundamentally altering food stamps or the

costs would outweigh the benefits of doing so but we need to detach that from the system of foreign subsidies, distorting markets so very much and making certain foodstuffs more expensive than they should be most especially for the pork. farm subsidies are something that are politically difficult thing to change but if we are looking at human welfare and basic fairness this is something we need to do. when i talked to people in the farming community they want to get rid of these things but understand you can't just do it for their competition and not for themselves. they want a fair system that levels the playing field for everybody. when i talked to producers and energy producers of ethanol, let's get rid of all the ethanol subsidies. that will normalize the corn market and make it cheaper as a source of food and at the same time if you get rid of all the energy subsidies, we should be getting rid of oil subsidies and wind it subsidies and energy subsidies as well and the best

forms of energy will obtain. equilibrium, we need more free enterprise particularly for the case of jobs and opportunity and growth for the poorest americans. >> host: springfield, georgia, you mentioned quote john paul ii, what are his views on the current pope whose views appear very antithetical to arthur brooks's. >> guest: the current pope is the marvel. more people are attending all over the world than ever before. if you are catholic or somebody sympathetic to catholics, you think that is really a great thing. the current holy father is -- he has not been exposed to american capitalism. he thinks of capitalism, he thinks of what is going on in argentina. 100 years ago argentina was the richest country per-capita in the western hemisphere in the process of underdevelopment of reasons because of cronyism because of big government stated some. all the things i have been regretting over the past two

hours on this program in huge abundance in argentina. no wonder the current pope who comes from that system sees capitalism through that lens. progressives and conservatives and centrists who benefited so very much from the rule of law and property rights to be free enterprise can lift people up we all think these things, we have an opportunity with the holy father to help him understand how the american dream is more like the world dream for human dignity. the best opportunity since i have been a catholic. >> host: mary calling in from pittsburgh. you got to turn down the volume. we will put you on hold for a second. get on the line with you and talk to you and remind you to turn down volume or you have a little bit of a delay. david in phoenix. we are listening. david in phoenix. david, you with us? david is not with us.

let's try another pittsburgh call, joseph in pittsburgh. we are listening. >> caller: i wanted to ask, the contract with harpercollins. i am pretty sure that is owned by rupert murdoch, one of its holdings. what is your opinion of rupert murdoch? >> guest: thanks for your question. harpercollins is part of news corp. and i know him personally, he loves this country. he is so happy to be in the united states, so happy for the freedom he brings and he has been a transformational person in media all over the world. to see somebody in a word i admire. >> host: bob in california. >> caller: hello.

good morning. still morning out here. i want to ask, we grew by taking jobs from europe and now china is growing by taking jobs from the united states. how do you continues this system of taking jobs from one set of people to another set of people and still maintain some sort of middle-class? >> guest: the important thing to keep in mind, any change doesn't just have winners. when you have fundamental economic change there are people who lose out as well. a good economic system, good social system, recognizes people are going to lose and people are going to win you have to deal with those who are losing. the thing i want to correct is we didn't just take jobs from

europe, we created new jobs. is greater abundance. when it--i wish it were a lot freer. i wish we had free enterprise as opposed to just capitalism, can create a lot of economic opportunity without destroying opportunity in this case. in the united states, however, jobs do move. they moved to parts of the world in the process of development where we were before. if we are going to deal with that in a way that doesn't leave people behind you can't just ignore people who were the fbi and. you have to get serious about education and retraining and we have not done that in this country. let me give you an example of what we could do. i go to a little town in kentucky, the factory in the town has been shut down and moved to guatemala and a lot of people are unemployed.

a doctor will specialize in disability, giving diagnoses of back pain in depression in disability. 11 million americans on permanent disability in economic dislocation. and poor americans are left behind, and i go across to north dakota and walmart, stocking shelves that wal-mart at $17 an hour. why is it we don't have relocations subsidies so people who have less opportunity, why don't we think about ways to retrain people and move them and is consistent with america's culture. all of us sitting here and our families didn't start out here. some did, native americans did but the vast majority of

americans came from some place else. we need the ethos of looking for opportunity and the government and culture that can facilitate and held more. >> host: prime minister margaret thatcher is reported to have said the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money. that is the road america is headed down now. in pennsylvania you are on the air. >> caller: thank you for your program and your present speaker. i just adore everything he said. of little bit about myself. i am a registered libertarian. i have three pictures on my window sill. even says work is the only thing that dignifies a man. i think you for the things you mentioned that help me and my argument. people want to say the good old days are gone. they are not. you have given so many examples how we have improved and i hope my friends were listening.

secondly please tell me how i can be more of an activist? how can i in spire that? might two children are grown up and very successful but are not activists and neither am i. although i am 91 to be more active. try to inspire that. the message you give with us, we have to aspiring everybody's. how can we be more active and get the people of office that are not doing their job? >> host: give us a quick snapshot of your life prior to today. >> caller: certainly. hi ammonite the-year-old section. i am of italian heritage and i grew up in brooklyn and philadelphia and i went to europe for four years from 1949 to 1953 and my husband there, we got a great life. he is dead now but that is okay because he was a great husband and i do want you to please tell us how to be more active. how can we get our children to

be more active. >> guest: if i can be like you when i am 90 that is all i ask. the key to activism is remembering each of us belongs to communities and each of us is blessed with leadership in these communities. if and 90-year-old people in the united states were talking, like you. the people around your windowsill, work brings people to dignity. this is unambiguously true. remembering the experiences you had in your life and the wisdom you bring and comments if you find ways in your current community to share these ideas, that is how ideas spread in the united states. in the current vernacular that is how things go viral. each one of the seas ourselves as a leader. we have a pivotal role in each of our communities and thinking who do i touch with whom i can share these views. thank you and god bless you. >> david in phoenix, you are on

the air. >> i watched tim geithner and had to turn him off before i had a stroke. i would like to hear from a very intelligent defender and reformer of the system how it is, i accept too big to fail but why couldn't the individuals responsible for running those institutions and to the ground have received savage punishment? maximum security confiscation of assets? how could the system never regain credibility if they keep getting away with it? >> guest: thank you for your question. the reason there was too big to fail and we had the bailout and things people are alarmed about morally as well as economically is there is so much fear. economists and know whether or not the atm machines would stop working and i don't mean atm machines for rich people. i mean for you and me.

that is something that stimulated among republicans and democrats the will to do something like tarp. there were activities in proper, when there was the legal and moral impropriety we need rectification of that. we need people to take more responsibility. it offends me as much as anybody else. 2 needs to fight for that? conservatives? not just progressives need to stand up for fairness and say it is not right when somebody gambles with somebody else's money and they are rewarded with being bailed out and being able to proceed from there. i agree with you but that is what we need, more public outrage from more common citizens as opposed to passing more legislation that cronies will wire around. >> host: from arthur brooks's book "the battle: how the fight between big government and free enterprise will shape america's

future" that 30% that narrative of the financial crisis, government was not the primary cause of the 2008 economic crisis, the government understands the crisis and knows how to fix it, main street americans were nothing more than victims of the crisis, the only way to save the economy is through massive government growth and deficit spending and the middle class will not pay for the stimulus package. only the rich will. >> guest: these are all views we heard starting in 2008, and 2009 and these things had to be false. the biggest one we need to keep in mind, a direct everybody's attention to my colleague peter wallace and's work on housing and the financial crisis. the biggest thing we need to remember is government housing policy which said third decades was democrats and republicans, full of american citizenship requires being able to buy a house and subsidizing the purchase of houses through loans people shouldn't have been

getting, go up the price of real-estate led to the bubbled and melted the financial system. this was bad public policy, and building up these bubbles in financial markets. and in point of fact it was a real problem but it was the private sector following the public sector's beat, and this is common sense. >> host: new book coming out in january. >> guest: he is talking about he basically has a book coming out in january that occurs how the financial crisis proceeded. it takes you step by step. it is complicated. people throw up their hands. repeater wallace and's book after the first of the year. >> host: you will see peter

wallace and on booktv's afterwards program. one of the books we are looking at for next year's afterwards. jessica, agusta, georgia. >> caller: hello. i am excited to be on here. thank you for being on c-span. arizona state university. and s speciality. what do you think future generations can do to move the united states forward and have a more positive opportunity? >> guest: congratulations and good luck in your career. in many ways this is the most exciting time because it is the blank slate, a desire to do good after there has been a lot of suffering and i can tell you are

going to be a real leader. i would recommend think for yourself. easy for me to sit here on the great c-span, this is how you should thing, think for yourself. more young people like saying i am republican or democrat and this is the way i think or when i was in college my professors all taught me this is the way to think. we are all autonomous individuals. we have access to lot of information. don't cake as given, people are telling you, a generation of leaders, incumbent morally on each person coming along to say i am going to form my ideology on the basis of what i think is right. if we have a generation of new leaders or freethinkers, will be to the powers that be, really dangerous for these vested interests because you could be the revolutionaries' the turn the country around.

>> host: back to the battle for a second. the political left understands the 30% television's appeal among younger adults. aggressively and successfully wooed them in the 2008 election campaign and plans to grow the coalition over time. there are three long-term strategy is to keep the young in the 30% coalition. payoff their debts, give them government jobs and make sure they never have to pay for the services the government provides. >> guest: there's always a strategy for people in power to bring people along permanently into their coalition. the greatest weakness entrenched powers have is people that are taken for granted to stop being taken for granted. is astonishing to me when i look at political debate there's a sense of demographic euphoria among liberals who say the world belongs to the left because there are more and more

non-whites, more and more single women 18 to 29s in favor of president obama, that is completely incorrect thinking. demography is not destiny. 75 years ago you couldn't find two roman catholics who voted for the republican party at every week catholics overwhelmingly republican. demography doesn't destine any particular party or ideology to failure or success. this tells us today, we can hasten these patterns of destroying democratic destiny by asking people to think for themselves so this could be the greatest nightmare for either side on the basis of what we do to improve the moral climate, fighting for the poor, creating opportunity, all the things those demographic groups in that have been left wing, that would bring them to the philosophy that engenders the greatest human dignity. >> host: christie in the ohio,

good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. a pleasure to speak with you both. the girl who called in earlier asking about activism, i discovered what monument in plymouth, mass. that i never knew existed called the national monument to the forefathers. it turned 125 years old this year. expands for face, morality, law, education and liberty and it stands for civil and religious liberty and my grandparents are survivors of the armenian genocide. i grew up in a family, we still have the family business. i am so worried for our country and so scared and for some reason this monument has pulled on my heart and i am trying to rally troops around.

i don't know if you have any suggestions or can put me in touch with her. >> host: this monument you found in plymouth, mass.? >> caller: it is not down by the waterfront. it is up on the hill. it is the largest granite monument in the united states of america and it was built during the civil war. they had to scale it down a little bit because it was hard to raise money at the time, but the thing i find unbelievable is most americans never heard of the monument before. i didn't either. i am 50 years old now and i was there in 2010 but over the past few years the work i have been trying to or spread about the monument is amazing how it is connected to americans from all over the country and this gives them hope. i don't know what to do.

>> host: >> guest: is there anything more wholesome than the things we just listed? these are terrific american values and human values for that matter. what can you do? part of it is the torch of your life. if you believe in these things, these things bring the most people to the happiest life. what greater joy can we have than fighting for these things for the people who need them most? be happy warrior. one of the big mistakes we make in america those who have been blessed with leadership positions, pretty much everybody watching here today, you are watching c-span. program about public affairs and you are interested in these things. how do we exert leadership? number one is not hiding views about what a better life means for more people, not hiding behind materialistic and economic language but saying this brings the best life to the most people and i'm willing to stand up and fight for this whether the people i am fighting for like me or not. that is the beginning of being

happy warrior. when we do that how we ever going to be a strong movement. >> host: faith and family, the republicans are characterized, conservative for family values and intolerance. >> guest: when you have sources of happiness like faith and family, don't use them as a weapon against somebody else. is absurd to take the source of happiness and use it as of weapons. use it as something to share. the difference between a force between negative force and positive force, is the first fight against scenes using any weapons at its disposal. the second, the happy force, the force that is winning fights for people. how are you going to fight for people? by sharing sources of goodness. if you have something beautiful you can share with more people, do so in a positive humanistic way.

don't do it in a negative puritanical way that batches people with your particular views. i got something big. i want to share it with you out of global brotherhood and a sense of love. >> host: two current issues we haven't addressed, immigration, same-sex marriage. >> guest: immigration us strongly suspect will be less of and he issued in 2016 than it is today. president obama gave the republicans agreed gifts through the executive order. this will slowly but surely take it out of the political discourse so the republicans are less responsible for legislation. it will be hot for a while. my guess is democrats are going to be very disappointed president obama did this because they couldn't keep the immigration issue alive nearly as long since obama took this particular step. the second is the way real immigration reform takes place is little by little.

of five years, 30 things need to get done and through legislation and policy actions of most important and least political objection can be taken piece by piece. visa reform, high skilled immigration reform, letting more engineers into silicon valley. guest worker program. a verify system so you know who is illegal and who is not illegal, little by little there will be positive progress for immigration reform may will be much less controversial in 2016 than it is today. on same-sex marriage this is something conservatives -- a lot of controversy on the right. left characterizes same-sex marriage as being an issue where the right is just monumental the 100% against it. that is not true. there is a huge amount of dialogue on the right on this issue. rather than adjudicating that let me tell you what we learned from this. 15 years ago same-sex marriage was a 70-32 against.

state is 60-40 issue for. the advocates for marriage equality, for same-sex marriage stopped fighting against. what values and fighting for equal civil rights. doesn't matter what your views on this are. some people watching are against it and some are for. lesson to take away is when you stop beating against things and start fighting for people you can prepare to start winning in your policy battle. >> host: linda in vermont, you are on booktv on c-span2 with arthur brooks. >> caller: my question is you seem to be espousing the answers to many of our social ills and our government isn't doing anything. is this because they are more interested in sustaining themselves than they are in taking care of the country?

understanding sooner or later the country is simply going to explode. >> guest: i appreciate the question. it is hard for me to be in the heart of policymakers and look at their motive is. i can look at the fact that we are not dealing with a lot of issues we need to. to begin with it is much easier when you are not in government to give solutions than when you are because the political complex, there is a bigger problem we need to deal with and that is leadership. and leaders don't look at political coalitions and simply try to accumulate political power or dashing their enemies. that is not leadership. leadership is using power for a positive purpose. is basically saying alaska people to sacrifice. i will do hard things, spent political capital. that is not what we have in washington d.c. or from the president. we don't have leadership, we have lack of executive leadership, grinding system is

down. the president of a nonprofit organization, it is not the united states, only a couple hundred people working full time but let me tell you if i didn't think, how are we trying to move ahead, help other people? if i didn't risk my own capital internally the organization would grind down. donors would stop giving to us. we would not have impact at have a positive force on politicians on the hill and good books and materials that have good events. this is required in leadership all over the place. the number one thing we should regret is we have forgotten what leadership means that the executive level. that is the problem in the united states today. >> guest: >> host: 15 minutes left with against. john in california, you are on the air. >> caller: how are you doing? i wanted to talk about the situation with government

employees. last numbers i checked the few years ago they were coming up on 30 million state, local and federal. they don't contribute anything. they don't produce anything whatsoever and just can't be sustained. instead of taking care of business, more or less wondering what is for lunch. do you have any answers as far as that is concerns, it can't be sustained. that is my main concern. >> guest: there are a lot of government employees. that is unambiguously true. do they create any good? i think i am not -- i wouldn't quite agree or characterize government employees as not creating good. we need a state. we have cases where markets phalange markets can't address every wrong in our society. we have public goods -- i wouldn't say somehow police officers and firefighters and people who are running and teachers working for the

government are not creating a whole lot of positive good. i.t. too many, yes. is the government too big, absolutely. what will we do about that? take one tangible issue that has driven a large part of the expansion of government and government payroll and that is public-sector unions. the whole idea that unions are bad is not right. unions, the labor unions are completely compatible with the free enterprise system but they have to be able to exist in balance with the management of corporations and have to have an interest in not driving corporations out of business. when you have collective bargaining agreements between management and employees they both have to have an interest in making sure the companies prosperous. that is not the case with public-sector unions because they don't have a budget constraint. when jon corzine was governor of new jersey and got in front of a public-sector union and said i'm fighting for you, the ceo of general motors going to the united autoworkers and saying i will do anything i can to raise your wages. that would be crazy.

he would be fired by the board of directors because that would not create a balance between the two. the problem with public-sector unions is they have flexible budget constraint and it is your money as a taxpayer. they can use the funds to support political candidates who support the expansion of public sector unions who are effectively paying for those political contributions with tax revenue. that is a real problem. conservatives get bent out of shape but i recommend our progressive viewers get bent out of shape about that as well. >> host: what does mr. brooks think about harold meyerson's column encouraging corporate boards to include labor representatives and community representatives? this would help boards think more in terms of stakeholders and not purely stockholders. what aei considers such a topic

for discussion? >> guest: he and i don't agree politically but that is beside the point. is that it is we have a corporate governance problem and he has a particular solution which is bringing more labour representation, more community representation on the board. i don't agree with that the we have a corporate governance crisis. alex pollock has done a lot of good work on corporate governance and he talks about there is not enough responsibility on corporate boards for organizations and we needed different responsibility. if he has positive steps how to do it having an affirmative-action for labor unions and community wraps, as that would create a misalignment of incentives in dangerous ways for corporations that would hurt working people but i do agree that we have a problem with corporate governance in america today. >> host: sharon wants to know how is your catholic faith in forming your thinking? >> guest: and the following way.

one of work on free enterprise i remember free enterprise comes after morality. that is not just roman catholic thinking. the is ethical thinking, secular ethical thinking that happens to work, the values the form work through my christian faith but i try to remember is that morality comes before markets. without proper sense of brotherhood, of helping others, honesty, loved, markets are going to be like any other system that can be used for good or for ill, there will be some sort of a moral machine. if we don't have the good view of helping fellow man we won't help our fellow man with the resources at our disposal which in the case of the united states can and should be the free enterprise system. >> host: from jean, educated, work 30 years, saved 10% through those years, invested most of my husband's life insurance, all went down in 2008.

had to retire in 2002 due to medical problems, not dependent on social security. there needs to be more controls on banking, and insurance companies need to be out of investment. >> guest: a lot of positive ideas on separating streams of investment but that's what the reason this happened. i am sympathetic to that end i heard that story again and again and it is not right that that happen to people who work hard and played by the rules like our e-mail letter here. the problem is we had a government system of housing is that melted down our market and the way we tried to redress this in the longest term for monetary policies have blown up these equity markets yet again after our e-mail got out of equity markets. ordinary people work really hard, get their life savings wiped out, no longer in equity markets and build up the stock market again through free money and is where the money goes? the top 10%. somebody minute ago said 90% of

the games went to the top 1%. that is not right but the numbers are 81% of the wealth gains since 2009 have gone to the top 10% of the income distribution. is a daring and economic regime from a president who promised that that wouldn't happen. we have the rich getting richer and the poor stagnant or getting poorer all the way back to 2009. we're two americas, one of america in full bloom of recovery at 5% economic growth and the other side of negative economic growth and wealth gains from policies makings are rich richer. that is an outrage. that is not right in this country we would have policies that would do that and we need to fight back. as conservatives and progressives and centrists, what am i going to do, have policies that help people at the bottom to have an equal shot at the american dream. the inequality we talk about, the nutty discussions at of the

government levels that inequalities the enemy. opportunity in the quality is the real problem, not income inequality. opportunity inequalities being driven by the policies of the last six years. >> host: brenda, you are on with arthur brooks. >> caller: you talked about too big to fail. i want to ask about iceland, a small country but they did not put money into their banks and a rest of the rothschilds there and their corrupt government was dismantled and replaced. why didn't we do something like that instead of giving money to the banks? they didn't get my second mortgage, my neighborhood is gone. those people bought those houses, when they lost their

homes the bank got paid. >> host: we got the point, thank you. >> guest: iceland is a small country, 250,000 people and it was clear it was a shell economy based on an unstable speculative banking system. bottom line don't run your country like iceland did. if we had a country -- we can crash like crazy in the united states and maintained a gritty, people like you in your neighborhood are the ones who got hurt a lot. when there is malpractice, when people are running off with money they didn't turn people should be held accountable. there is no reason to think somebody should have special privileges because they are rich but i think just because you are not rich doesn't mean you shouldn't be held accountable. between 25% and 50% of people who lost their homes, foreclose on their home voluntarily.

think about this. this is from the university of chicago, talk about voluntary foreclosure. millions of people turned their keys into the bank when they pay their mortgage because they were upside-down in their mortgage and it was not interested is a. all of us should regret rich people, middle class people and poor people who don't behave ethically. >> host: let's hear from sharleen via e-mail. i am amazed you see us as comparable with the european social democracies. those countries have universal health care at lower cost, reasonable accommodations for working families with small children, they test higher than us at all educational levels, have a better percentage of full-time jobs with decent benefits, have a good business environment with smaller discrepancy between haves that have nots. how can you draw the conclusion which you did. >> guest: i recommend our e-mail

remove to europe. it sounds great. go do that. good luck finding a job and good luck fitting into society, good luck learning the language. the truth is in the united states we are the ones who are soaking up the entrepreneurs from europe. verizon at entrepreneurialism out migration from young free people looking for opportunities because the united states is a dynamic society that rewards people more. of the good enough? adds up to the not. does your pastern advantages? for sure. i live in europe for a long time and the food is good and the weather is great but i prefer with respect to opportunity to live in the united states and people of voting with their feet and agree with me. my wife is an immigrant from spain. she is grateful for every day she lived in this country. we had no money when we came to the united states, we spoke very little english. is she going to have opportunity? she had four job offers in her first month. the greatest country in the

world for people who want to work. profound moment for me. she took -- worked for three years at a minimum wage job and we needed that were can either of us thought that was a dead end dog band we are grateful for it. can we do better? for sure but don't give me europe because i don't want it. >> host: parter bob brooks this offer, social scientist, happiness expert and president of the enterprise institute, arthur brooks,@parter -- arthur brooks, "who really cares: the surprising truth about compassionate conservatism" came out in 2006. his next book was "gross national happiness: why happiness matters for america--and how we can get more of it" which he says is his favorite of these policy books, "the battle: how the fight between big government and free enterprise will shape america's future" came out in 2010. and finally his most recent is

"the road to freedom: how to win the fight for free enterprise". his newest book is coming out in september of 2015, the conservative heart, thanks for being with us. >> c-span created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local, capable satellite provider. this weekend on booktv and inside look at campaign contributions, coverage of the louisiana book festival land war waged in cyberspace plus books about improving public education, the life of general george custer and the mia's coverage of national security issues. for a full schedule visit our web site booktv.org. 40 hours of nonfiction books and authors. booktv,