book tv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. tweet us, twitter.com/book tv or post a comment on our facebook page. facebook.com/book tv. >> here is a story i want to tell you about, this is a story that goes from 1935 to the present. that's going to be the timeline. 1935 to 1960. the first thing i want you to lock in your brain, i will act out the power point. it will be like interpretive dance. i can do this. i can so do this. right? watch me do a gram, right?

anyway, so here is the first one i'd like to look in your find. 1935 to 2016, and gdp, how rich we're getting, how much we're producing and kind of goes up every year, steady line up. that's the first part 1935to 2016. now i'm going to divide the story into two time periods and i'm going to break it at 1980. not offing is perfect at that time. it will give us an idea how to work with it. okay. so, 1935 to 1980. what happens in america? and the answer is, what happens in america, we work on how to build opportunity. how to build opportunity and you know how we do it? we do it with two principal tools. first one, cover the children's ears. it's a nasty word, if we regulate.

[applause] no, we do things like we enforce anti-trust regulations. so, big guys don't get to roll over little businesses before they can get started. we put a cop on the beat on wall street. right? try to keep it level out there. well, oh, and we regulate the biggest financial institutions, right? you want to be a bank, there's going to be regulation there. and banks became regulated businesses. so part one, we regulate and part two, progressive taxation. we tax those at the top and we use that money to invest in building opportunity. more opportunity. how do we do it? we invest it in education big time, g.i. bills to thank

returning soldiers from world war ii, we invested in public education, k through 12. we invested in state universities. why do we make all of these investments in education because if you got an education you could do anything. that was-- we believed that. we invested in infrastructure, roads, national highways, transportation systems, bridges, power, power to rural america, why? because we didn't know what the next great business would be, we were pretty darn sure you'd need electricity. right? and pretty darn sure you'd need roads to get your goods to market so your workers could get to you. so we made those investments together for those businesses could grow here in america and so the jobs could grow here in america and the third thing we did, and this is what-- remarkable people, we invested

in research. we put money into medical research, and scientific research and engineering research and behavioral sciences research, all kinds of research, why? because we believed in the future. we didn't know what that search was going to produce. we didn't know, but we believe that if we built this giant p-up of idea, ideas, that things would come from that and permit our children and grandchildren to live lives we never even dreamed of. we made those investments and here is the deal. it worked. i mean, it worked, i can liao it still gives me goose bumps how much it worked. it worked so much that the 90% of america, everybody outside the top 10%, the upper middle class, the middle class, the working class, the working

poor, and the poor poor, together got 70% of all the income growth in that time period. okay. so which did better? -- the rich did better. but again, when you scratch through the data, it's all the way, every-- the pie got bigger and everybody got more to eat. so, look, we weren't perfect, not by any stretch. it was there from the first time we measured with african-americans held firmly at the bottom. and here was the deal. america was so commit the just for the basic notion of opportunity, that we made changes and in 1960's and 1970's, the black-white wealth

gap shrank by 30% in about a 15-year period. so, we weren't there, not by any stretch, but we were on a road and then we hit 1980. ronald reagan trickle down economics, deregulate. turn the banks loose to do whenever they want to do. stop enforcing or cut down on the anti-trust laws. oh, the taxes. cut taxes for those at the top and when you cut taxes for those at the top, all of those investments in education, infrastructure and research start shrinking up and that's what we did. and here is the deal. gdp goes up across both time periods. gdp keeps going up, so how did the 90% do?

from 1980 to 2016 the answer is the 90%, everybody outside the top 10% got nothing. none of the new income growth, zip. nearly 100% of the new income growth in america from 1980 to 2016 has gone to the top 10% in this country. think about that. and the black-white wealth gap in that period of time has tripled, yeah, that's what trinkle down has done for african-americans now. and look, there are people who will readily point out, whoa, there's a whole lot more food stamps than there used to be. yeah, and more subsidies.

>> yes. but there is about people who want a chance to earn a living, build something for himself. people who want to be able to get to work. at-- and have some security for themselves and their kids and that, that part is just gone and now, here comes the real twist of the knife. it didn't have to happen. it didn't happen that the middle class started doing really, really badly and working families across the spectrum started doing really badly. because of gravity. that damn gravity will get you every time. it's like you go up, but then you've got to come back down. oh, no, no, no, the country keeps getting richer and it didn't happen because in technology and it didn't happen because of constitution you've got to keep your eye on the first step.

we're getting richer, richer, richer, the difference is what's happening, who is getting to participate in the richness. no, the story i tell in this book about what happened, why it changes between time one and time two is basically that a bunch of billionaires and corporate ceo's decided to invest millions, not-- backgroundle dollars in making sure that washington worked well for them and made that investment and it paid off. >> here is a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country, may 20th live from maryland. just north of washington d.c. from may 31st to june 2nd, book for us at the publishing industry's annual trade show, book expo north america in new

york city, we'll sit down with passengers with the upcoming books. and chicago june 10th and 11th followed by roosevelt reading festival hosted by the presidential museum in hyde park, new york on june 17th. for information about book fairs and festivals book tv will be covering and watch previous coverage, check the bo books on our website, book tv.o tv.org. >> i've long been a student of slavery given wii work at montpelier and i know how important it is to understanding history. i was throwing understanding that time between emancipation and the modern civil vites era is just at central.

sometimes you mention the word reconstruction to americans and they're not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. i'll share with you a personal anecdote about my own ignorance prior to my intense spiff study to this era. >> i had a picture, a picture in head of african-american and looking like rubes and hay seeds in their teeth. i in my research, as difficult as it was, watched the birth of anation, the original 1950 movie by dw griffith. i had recalled i had watched it in high school in a humanities

class, no discussion about the concept. the point was to discussion griffith's innovative techniques. ... it shows you how strong popular culture can be especially, visual images. indeed, this movie captivated the american public and put in their heads lots of false images that were not countered by our schooling because of the inaccuracy of our schooling and

presenting these parts of our history. to be sure, there were 23 african-american gentlemen who served in the congress and in the senate and they did so with distinction. yes, reconstruction was a good thing. it ended too early but what followed was a bad thing. that of course was the jim crow era. again, african-americans were abandoned by federal government and allowed to be virtually free enslaved by white supremacists. >> you can watch this and other programs online at the tv .org back. [inaudible conversations]